Tehran warned to leave ‘path of confrontation’
Tehran warned to leave ‘path of confrontation’.
VIENNA, Dec 2, (Agencies): Three European Union heavyweights accused Iran on Thursday of continuing “down the path of non-compliance and confrontation” with its nuclear work, four days before world powers are to resume talks with Tehran.
In a statement read out at a closed-door meeting of the 35-nation governing board of the UN nuclear watchdog, Germany, France and Britain urged Iran to address their concerns about the nature of its nuclear programme.
“There is no alternative: Iran must actively address the lack of confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme,” it said, according to a copy made available to Reuters.
Talks between Iran and six big powers — the United States, France, Russia, Britain, China and Germany — are due to resume next week in Geneva in the first such meeting in more than year.
“We are convinced that this is an opportunity for Iran to demonstrate its readiness to engage and to address the substance of our concerns on the nuclear issue in good faith, while other issues of mutual interest can be addressed as well,” the statement said.
UN nuclear agency chief Yukiya Amano complained on Thursday about Iran’s lack of cooperation with his inspectors, four days before long-stalled talks resume between Tehran and major powers.
Amano’s comments to the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) highlight the challenges that negotiators will face in seeking to resolve a dispute over the Islamic state’s nuclear ambitions.
“The agency needs Iran’s cooperation in clarifying outstanding issues which give rise to concerns about possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme, including by providing access to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the agency,” Amano said in a speech.
Western powers accuse Iran of seeking to develop atom bombs and want the country to suspend uranium enrichment activities, which can have both civilian and military uses.
Iran says its nuclear programme is aimed at generating electricity and has repeatedly rejected demands to curb it.
Arrests
Iran has arrested a number of people it says were behind the murder of a nuclear scientist and were linked to foreign spy agencies, state television quoted Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi as saying on Thursday.
The arrests come as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili is preparing to hold talks with European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton in Geneva on Dec 6-7, the first such meeting between Iran and major powers in more than a year.
Scientist Majid Shahriyari was killed in a bomb attack on his car in Tehran on Monday, and another nuclear scientist was wounded in another bombing in the city at the same time.
“A part of a group behind the recent terrorist attacks have been arrested. Mossad, CIA and MI6 have played a role in this incident and by arresting these people we have found new clues,” television quoted Moslehi as saying, referring to the intelligence services of Israel, the United States and Britain.
“Those who cooperated with these spy agencies … had more plans, but they were stopped,” he added, without giving the number of those arrested or any other further details.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Iranian officials have said those behind the attack aimed to stop the country’s nuclear programme.
Iran is at odds with the West over its nuclear programme. Western countries fear Tehran’s nuclear work is aimed at making a bomb but Iran denies this, saying it only wants to generate electricity.
Iran will step up security for its nuclear scientists after a prominent physicist was assassinated and another wounded in bomb attacks, its atomic chief said in a report on Thursday.
“Based on a recent decision, it has been arranged that the security detail (of nuclear scientists) will be multiplied and other protection techniques will also be applied,” Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.
Assailants attached bombs to the cars of two senior scientists in Iran’s nuclear programme on Monday, killing one of them, Majid Shahriari, and wounding the other, Fereydoon Abbasi Davani. Three other people were wounded.
“Dr Shahriari was not alone as he was with his security detail,” Salehi said. “But the evil methods that enemies employ are unpredictable.”
Tehran has blamed the attacks on the United States and Israel, which accuse Iran seeking to make nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian programme. Tehran denies the charge.
“Since last year, we put under protection… hundreds of our scientists and experts working in the nuclear field,” Salehi said.
In January, another Iranian nuclear scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, was killed in a bomb attack which Tehran blamed on “mercenaries” in the pay of Israel and the United States.
Concern
The UN atomic watchdog expressed “great concern” Thursday over North Korea and also turned up the heat on Syria and Iran, which are both under investigation for alleged illicit nuclear activity.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano told a meeting of the body’s board of governors that he was worried by reports North Korea has built a state-of-the-art uranium enrichment facility, which the United States suggested dated much further back than the reclusive Stalinist state claims.
“It was with great concern that I learned of recent reports about a new uranium enrichment facility, as well as the construction of a new light water reactor, in the DPRK” or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Amano said in his opening address to the closed-door meeting.
Earlier this month a US scientist revealed he had been shown a new uranium enrichment plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex outside the capital North Korean capital Pyongyang.
The news has heightened international concern that North Korea — which has conducted two nuclear weapons tests — could produce highly-enriched weapons-grade uranium on top of the plutonium already in its possession.
The IAEA is not in a position to verify the reports since its inspectors have been barred from North Korea since last year.
Washington’s envoy to the IAEA, Glyn Davies, described the revelations as “disturbing” and said the US believed North Korea “has been pursuing enrichment for an extended period of time — long before April 2009 when the DPRK claims to have begun its Yongbyon enrichment facility construction.”
Furthermore, “there is a clear likelihood that DPRK has built other uranium enrichment-related activities in its territory,” Davies said.
IAEA chief Amano also appeared to ramp up pressure on Syria, saying he had written to the government there for the first time to try to bring some movement into a stymied two-year-long IAEA probe.
“I wrote a letter to the minister for foreign affairs of the Syrian Arab Republic on November 18 to request the government to provide the agency with prompt access to relevant information and locations” connected to an alleged nuclear site, Amano said.
“I also requested Syria’s cooperation regarding the agency’s verification activities in general.”
It was the first time that Amano has contacted the Syrian government directly with regard to the agency’s probe and diplomats close to the IAEA saw it as a sign of his growing impatience with Damascus.
“He’s trying to move things along,” one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Syria is accused of building an undeclared reactor at a remote desert site called Dair Alzour until it was bombed by Israeli planes in September 2007.
Turning to Iran, Amano complained the Islamic republic was continuing to stonewall a separate investigation there, even as he welcomed the resumption of long-stalled talks between Tehran and world powers.
Iran “has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all (its) nuclear material is in peaceful activities,” he said.
Iran was defying UN Security Council resolutions and pressing ahead with its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.
It was also refusing to answer questions about possible military dimensions to its atomic work.
The IAEA has been investigating Iran’s nuclear programme for eight years now to try to establish whether it is entirely peaceful as Tehran claims or whether it masks a covert drive to build a bomb as western powers believe.
Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions over its refusal to suspend enrichment of uranium, which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly refined form, the fissile core of an atom bomb.
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