MOSCOW, 27 June 2004 — The head of the United Nations nuclear agency said yesterday that Iran should reconsider its decision to resume work toward uranium enrichment but that in any case he did not expect European countries to cut off dialogue with the Islamic republic over the issue.
“I hope Iran will go back to full suspension,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed El-Baradei told reporters. He was reacting to Iran’s announcement that it was going back on a promise it made in February to Britain, France and Germany not to build and test centrifuges for producing enriched uranium, which can be used to make bombs.
This promise was part of confidence-building measures urged on Iran while the IAEA investigates US charges that the country is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
The United States and the European Union yesterday called on Iran to go back on its decision to resume the construction of centrifuges for enriching nuclear fuel.
In a statement issued at an EU-US summit in the west of Ireland, Washington and the EU said: “We are disturbed by Iran’s recent announcement of its intention to resume manufacturing and assembly of centrifuges and urge Iran to rethink its decision.”
“I hope this is temporary,” El-Baradei said of the Iranian move.
“It does not involve the enrichment of material, nonetheless I think it would be good for Iran to go back. I hope it would be soon to full suspension as outlined by them to us in February,” El-Baradei said. On the reaction of Britain, France and Germany, which have expressed sharp disappointment with the Iranian decision and which have been leading the IAEA effort to get Iran to cooperate, El-Baradei said: “My feeling is that they will continue with their dialogue with Iran. I haven’t heard that this is going to stop.”
Iran agreed with the so-called Euro-3 last year to suspend enrichment.
But the 35-nation board of the IAEA passed a resolution on June 18 rebuking Tehran for failing to come clean about its nuclear program, deploring the level of Iranian cooperation and calling for the 15-month-old investigation into Iran’s nuclear activities to be wrapped up within a few months.
Iran in turn complained that the Euro-3 had failed to keep their side of the bargain.
“The Europeans had pledged that the Iranian file would be closed and they have not met the commitments,” said Hassan Rowhani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and top nuclear negotiator.
But the US undersecretary of state for arms control and security, John Bolton, said that the Iranian move was “an act of defiance of the IAEA Board of Governors, it is a thumb in the eye of the international community”.
The Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, Pirooz Hosseini, had said in a letter to El-Baradei Tuesday that since Iran was continuing to build international confidence — by honoring an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allowing for wider inspections of its facilities — Iran felt free “to resume, under IAEA supervision, manufacturing of centrifuge components and assembly and testing of centrifuges as of June 29, 2004”.
