TEHRAN, 3 November 2003 — Iran reiterated yesterday it remained unwilling to totally halt uranium enrichment, but pledged that it remained committed to answering any new questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“Our uranium enrichment activities are still in their early stages, and it has only been several months since we began. We have said we agree to voluntarily suspend this, but not stop,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
“The use of nuclear technology for peaceful ends is our right, and we do not have the right nor the wish to reject this,” he added, asserting that “no country has the right to deprive Iran of this technology.”
“We have given a complete report (to the IAEA) and we are ready, as we have already said, to cooperate fully and give other details demanded,” Asefi said.
Asefi said no date had yet been set for the parliamentary ratification of the additional protocol of the IAEA. “Reports on any date in this regard are just based on speculations as the relevant process must first be finished by the IAEA before the Iranian government can forward the draft bill on the IAEA protocol to the Parliament,” Asefi said.
IAEA chief Mohammad El-Baradei had said that he will send the relevant report on Iran’s nuclear activities in the second week of November to the IAEA governor board. They are scheduled to meet on Nov. 20.
“Iran’s nuclear program was and is a technical issue and should therefore be dealt only within the IAEA framework and fortunately efforts by the United States and Israel to turn it into a political challenge have eventually failed,” Asefi said. The spokesman reiterated that Iran has tried to remove all ambiguities concerning its nuclear activities. In reference to renewed international concern on uranium enrichment, he said that Iran has just been in the initial phase but planned to progress.
In another development Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned Britain’s ambassador to Tehran over reported comments by Prime Minister Tony Blair linking Tehran’s climbdown over nuclear cooperation to the war in Iraq.
“We summoned the British Ambassador (Richard Dalton) yesterday and told him of our displeasure,” Asefi told reporters.
“We do not accept this kind of thinking and we think it is very ugly for a politician who is encountering problems in his own country as well as in Iraq to start accusing others.”
Meanwhile, the Arabic daily Al-Hayat published yesterday the names of 147 suspected members of the Al-Qaeda terror network and the Taleban who were extradited by Iran in October. The newspaper did not say how it obtained the list about which Iran informed the United Nations, but the article was datelined New York.
The names included 29 Saudis, 12 Jordanians, 13 Yemenis, six Moroccans, six Tunisians, one Syrian, seven Somalis, 35 Pakistanis and 24 others whose nationalities could not be established.
The Pakistanis and the unknown group were handed over to Islamabad, the paper said. Three Afghans and three Lebanese were also identified.
“Iran says it handed them over to their own countries through diplomatic channels,” Al-Hayat said.
