VIENNA, 27 April 2006 — Iran’s nuclear chief Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh met yesterday with the head of the UN atomic agency Mohamed El-Baradei in last-ditch talks two days before a UN deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment expires. Diplomats said they did not expect any breakthrough from the talks, which lasted 90 minutes, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already said Iran will not heed UN calls for it to suspend enrichment, which makes nuclear reactor fuel but also nuclear bomb material.
The UN Security Council has set a nonbinding, 30-day deadline — running out tomorrow — for Tehran to suspend enrichment and cooperate with an investigation by Baradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Baradei is to file tomorrow a report on Iranian compliance. Non-compliance could lead to Security Council sanctions against Iran, although Iranian allies Russia and China oppose such a move. Iran says its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity but the United States charges that it is a cover for the secret development of atomic weapons.
Aghazadeh and Baradei discussed “how to speed up resolving outstanding issues” and “how to find ways and means to facilitate further progress,” Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, who attended the meeting, told AFP. Contacted by telephone from Tehran, Aghazadeh’s deputy at the IAEA, Mohammed Saidi, who was also at the meeting, told AFP that the talks had been “encouraging.”
But diplomats said they thought the Iranians had nothing new to offer and that the meeting would not change what is almost certain to be a report that will say Iran has failed to meet the Security Council’s demands. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming refused to comment on the meeting, saying that this would be reflected in Baradei’s report, other than to say that IAEA director of safeguards Olli Heinonen was also there.
Baradei was reportedly “upset” at being rebuffed after he had made a personal appeal on a trip to Tehran earlier this month for Iran to comply with the UN demands, which repeated a call the IAEA board of governors had made in February, said a diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Iran has proposed to hold off on expanding its enrichment capabilities at a facility in Natanz, after announcing April 11 that it had enriched uranium for nuclear fuel, if it is allowed to continue the work it has started — an idea the US and EU states have rejected, the diplomat said. The Council could pass a resolution making full suspension of enrichment and full cooperation with the IAEA investigation legally binding if Iran does not heed the tomorrow’s deadline. This could open the door to UN international economic sanctions or even military action, something the United States has not ruled out.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned yesterday that any US attack against the Islamic republic would prompt retaliation “in every possible part of the world.” The United States believes Baradei’s report will show Iran has failed to comply with the demanded enrichment halt and requests for information, US ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte said in Berlin on Tuesday.
A senior European diplomat said in Vienna: “It is not going to be a good report. That is quite clear. What is there positive to report?” Heinonen had last week put off a trip to Iran in what diplomats said was a clear sign that Tehran was failing to heed IAEA demands. Heinonen postponed the trip when Iran refused to answer questions about possible secret enrichment work and activities, including missile research, that could be related to making and using nuclear weapons.
