TEHRAN, 27 September 2005 — Iran will resume uranium enrichment and stop allowing UN snap checks of its atomic facilities if moves to report it to the Security Council are not reversed, a Foreign Ministry statement said yesterday. The statement, read out on state television, said Iran “would cancel all its voluntary and temporary measures including implementation of the Additional Protocol.” The Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty allows snap checks of atomic facilities.
“If the (International Atomic Energy) Agency does not correct its resolution or insists on applying it, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be forced to go back on all its voluntary concessions, particularly application of the additional protocol,” the foreign ministry said in a statement published by Iran’s student news agency, ISNA.
Earlier in Vienna, Iran’s vice president warned yesterday that reporting Tehran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program would only “breed tension” and increase volatility in the Middle East. “There is no doubt that a report to the Security Council initiates a chain of events, of actions and reactions that breed tension and add volatility to an already vulnerable political situation in the region,” Gholamreza Aghazadeh told a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
The IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors adopted Saturday a resolution that threatens to take Iran before the world body for violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Aghazadeh said that “engaging the Security Council ... abrogates” a 2003 agreement to suspend the enriching of uranium, a nuclear reactor fuel that can also be bomb material.
That agreement was made in Tehran with European Union negotiators Britain, France and Germany, the same countries which drafted the IAEA resolution. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful but the United States claims it hides a covert weapons program.
Aghazadeh said: “Iran has no commitments to maintain and sustain the measures voluntarily implemented thus far, following the agreements in Tehran,” but did not provide any details. Diplomats close to the IAEA said Iran was analyzing the situation and may give its response next week in Tehran.
