TEHRAN, 16 June 2005 — Iran has admitted to processing plutonium, a potential material for atomic bombs, more recently than it originally reported, according to the draft of a report to be made to the UN nuclear agency and obtained by AFP yesterday. The International Atomic Energy Agency “has been pursuing with Iran the dates of its plutonium separation experiments” and Iran has admitted to purifying plutonium in 1998, the text said.

This was a revision of Iran’s previous statement “that the experiments were completed in 1993,” according to the draft for a speech to be delivered to the IAEA’s board of governors today by deputy director for safeguards Pierre Goldschmidt. A diplomat close to the IAEA said the agency therefore “wants to know whether Iran is still processing plutonium.”

“If they lied, then the IAEA knows this has implications. The agency wants to know they’re telling the truth and not making a firecracker,” that is, a nuclear bomb, the diplomat said. The text outlines areas in which the IAEA is still trying to pin down Iran’s nuclear activities in an investigation that began in February 2003.

Meanwhile, presidential hopefuls pulled out all the stops yesterday to tip the balance in Iran’s tightest-ever election, sensing the chance to push frontrunner Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani into a second round. Informal opinion polls show the former president, once considered a racing certainty to sweep home in tomorrow’s vote, is facing a twin challenge from hard-line former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and reformer Mostafa Moin.

With campaigning banned on the day before the election, a projection by one institute said Rafsanjani was due to poll 24-28 percent, Qalibaf 14-16 percent and Moin 12-15 percent. This would mean none of the eight candidates will get the 50 percent needed to win outright, pushing the election into an even more unpredictable second round in one or two weeks, the first run-off in the history of the Islamic republic.

“If we have two more weeks, without any doubt, Moin can win the elections. Moin will be for sure in the second round. It’s possible he can win in the first round,” Mohammad Reza Khatami, brother of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami and a leading reformist, told AFP.

In a further twist, the hard-line candidate with the weakest poll ratings, Mohsen Rezai, announced he was pulling out of the race to give his fellow conservative candidates a better chance.