TEHRAN: Iran will allow the UN nuclear agency to inspect a newly revealed and still unfinished uranium enrichment facility, the country’s nuclear chief told state television Saturday.
Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi did not specify when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could visit the site, but said it has to be worked out with the agency under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty rules.
Iran’s newly revealed enrichment site is said to be in the arid mountains near Qom, inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to the elite Revolutionary Guards.
The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges — much less than the more than 8,000 machines at Natanz, Iran’s known industrial-scale enrichment facility. Still, the enriching machines in Qom facility will produce nuclear fuel — or possibly the payload for atomic warheads.
US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran on Friday of constructing a secret underground uranium enrichment facility and of hiding its existence from international inspectors for years.
But Salehi said there was nothing secret about the site and that Iran complied with UN rules that require it to inform the world body’s nuclear agency six months before a uranium enrichment facility becomes operational.
Salehi said Tehran should be praised, not condemned, for voluntarily revealing the existence of the nuclear facility. “Under (NPT) rules, we are required to inform the IAEA of the existence of such a facility 180 days before introducing materials but we are announcing it more than a year earlier. Still, we see there is controversy. We are astonished,” he said.
Salehi said construction of the Qom facility was a “precautionary measure” to protect Iran’s nuclear facilities from possible attacks.
Hours earlier, Obama offered Iran “a serious, meaningful dialogue” over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.
“Iran’s leaders must now choose — they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people,” Obama said in his radio and Internet address.
Obama said that evidence of Iran’s building the underground plant “continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion” that jeopardizes global nonproliferation.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would discuss Iran’s nuclear program with Ahmadinejad in Tehran next month, but urged caution over new sanctions.
Asked if Turkey would support fresh UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, Erdogan said: “Without seeing what would be in the resolution, it’s difficult to say.” Turkey is currently a member of the 15-nation Security Council, which has already passed three rounds of sanctions against Iran.
