TEHRAN, 17 June 2004 — Iran’s president warned yesterday that Tehran could back away from key commitments over its nuclear program if the UN atomic energy watchdog adopted a harsh European-drafted resolution.
Mohammad Khatami said Iran would feel “no moral obligation” to maintain a suspension of uranium enrichment nor allow tougher inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency if Iran were slapped with yet more criticism.
In Vienna, the US ambassador to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, said these threats constitute intimidation and suggest that Iran has something to hide.
But Khatami did offer some reassurance by dismissing any immediate talk of quitting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“For the moment, we do not want to leave the NPT or stop applying the additional protocol,” which gives inspectors more power, Khatami told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
“But if the European resolution is adopted in its current form, that means the Europeans do not respect their obligations to us and we will not have any obligations to them,” he said.
“If this process continues, we will not have any moral obligation to continue the voluntary suspension of enrichment,” Khatami warned, describing the British-French-German draft as “very bad”.
The draft under discussion in Vienna calls for the probe into Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program to be stepped up, and chastises the regime for its failure to allay suspicions it is seeking nuclear weapons under the cover of generating atomic energy.
Khatami said Iran would not capitulate to calls for it to cease all fuel cycle activities, saying “we will not accept a resolution that is illegal. We are determined to continue our program to master civil nuclear technology and to master the nuclear fuel cycle,” he asserted. The Europeans would prefer Iran abandon the fuel cycle altogether, given that it could eventually be turned from civil to military purposes.
In return for Iranian compliance with a string of IAEA demands, the Europeans promised to help wrap up the investigation in Iran’s favor, something that would open the door to wider trade with Europe.
In contrast, the United States wants the IAEA to send the Iranian dossier to the Security Council but does not have support for this on the agency’s board. Ambassador Brill said he saw Iran’s posturing as yet more proof there was a covert weapons program.
Iran says it has met its side of the bargain, even though IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei said in Vienna on Monday that cooperation from Tehran — lumped into an “axis of evil” by US President George W. Bush — had so far been “less than satisfactory”.
In Vienna, a top member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council — Seyed Hossein Mussavian — told AFP he did not believe Tehran had the “option to cut relations with the IAEA.”
But he said that after Iran’s allowing of inspections over the past 15 months, “now for the majority of board members it is clear that there is no atomic bomb (in Iran) and no diversion toward military activities.”
Meanwhile, members of Iran’s Basij militia formed a human chain around the country’s first nuclear power station, and vowed to defend the facility to their “last drop of blood”, the official news agency IRNA said yesterday.
The agency said the protest at Bushehr — sparked by fresh pressure on Iran over its nuclear program from the UN atomic energy watchdog — took place on Tuesday and yesterday.
