VIENNA, 29 November 2004 — Backing down ahead of a deadline, Iran apparently has given up its demand to exempt some equipment from a deal freezing uranium enrichment programs that can make nuclear weapons, diplomats said yesterday.
The diplomats said the International Atomic Energy Agency received a letter containing a pledge not to test some centrifuges during the freeze — which would keep them outside of the terms of the agreement.
The pledge appeared to resolve a dispute that threatened to escalate into possible referral of Iran to the UN Security Council for defying the board of the agency. But the diplomats — including some from European Union countries — said that the letter still needed close examination to see what the Iranians had exactly agreed to.
Only if the Iranians agreed to totally suspend enrichment — including all use of the centrifuges — will the dispute be resolved, they said.
The Iranian promise came less than a day before the IAEA was scheduled to reconvene in Vienna amid a building crisis on the issue of enrichment suspension.
That IAEA meeting was adjourned in disarray Friday. The pause until today was meant to give time for the Iranian government to approve a total freeze of the program, which can produce both low-grade nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material for the core of nuclear warheads. Delegates were also to decide on further steps in policing Tehran’s nuclear activities.
The dispute about what constituted full suspension had dominated the meeting since its opening day Thursday.
France, Britain and Germany say a Nov. 7 deal they worked out with Iran includes all equipment as part of the freeze — but Tehran had insisted it had a right to run some centrifuges for research and development purposes.
Iranian officials had suggested the issue was not up for debate only hours before the revelations that they had apparently dropped their demands.
“Referral to the UN Security Council would not be the end of the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran earlier yesterday — alluding to the possibility that the board would ask for Security Council involvement unless Iran accepted a total suspension that included the centrifuges.
The Europeans say the deal committed Iran to full suspension of enrichment and all related activities — at least while the two sides discuss a pact meant to provide Iran with EU technical and economic aid and other concessions.
But Iran came to Thursday’s opening day of the IAEA meeting with demands that it be allowed to operate the 20 centrifuges — which spin gas into enriched uranium.
EU delegates to the Vienna meeting said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw talked on the weekend with Hassan Rowhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and his country’s point man on nuclear matters, in an effort to resolve the dispute.
