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Gold9472
08-31-2007, 08:16 AM
IAEA: Iranian Cooperation Significant

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/30/ap4070819.html

By GEORGE JAHN 08.30.07, 8:30 PM ET

VIENNA, Austria - The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday reported "significant" cooperation from Iran with its nuclear probe but noted it was still enriching uranium, prompting calls for stepped up U.N. sanctions from Washingon and its allies.

The report nonetheless noted that Tehran had slowed uranium enrichment, an assessment that - together with Iran's recently increased cooperation - could hamper the sanctions effort. Iran said it proved it was the target of unfair U.S. attacks.

IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen highlighted the importance of Tehran's increased readiness to answer questions about former nuclear activities, noting that its past stonewalling had triggered Security Council sanctions in the first place.

"We have an important step for the first time," he said. "We have been able to agree ... on how to resolve the outstanding issues."

Indirectly responding to U.S. criticism that Tehran was only working with the agency on some issues to delay new U.N. penalties, he noted Iran had to adhere to a strict timetable to lift its past veil of secrecy on more than two decades of nuclear activity, most of it clandestine until revealed more than four years ago.

"This is not an open-ended timeline," he said. "The key is that Iran adheres to this timeline," he added, describing Iran's timely compliance as a "litmus test" of its true intentions.

Iran was providing answers under a recently agreed Iran-IAEA cooperation plan brokered by Heinonen and the report said that pact was a "significant step forward."

If deadlines are met and Iran provides all the information sought, the agency should be able to close the file on its more than four-year investigation of Tehran's past nuclear activities by year's end, a senior U.N. official said.

But the U.S. played down suggestions of progress.

"I don't see anything, at this point, in this report, that changes the basic facts," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington. "The international community is going to continue to ratchet up the pressure."

Noting the continuation of the enrichment program - which can make both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material - Casey urged Tehran to "serve the real needs of their people instead of trying to pursue a nuclear weapon."

France was even more direct. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani declared that without an enrichment freeze, Paris will "pursue ... looking into a third sanctions resolution."

Besides refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program, Tehran also continues to defy the Security Council by building a plutonium-producing reactor - another pathway to nuclear arms.

Drawn up by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, much of the confidential report obtained by The Associated Press document an increase in Iran's enrichment capabilities, putting the number of centrifuges enriching uranium at close to 2,000 at its vast underground hall at Natanz and testing and readying more than 650 more.

The 2,000 figure is an increase of a few hundred of the machines over May, when the IAEA last reported on Iran. Still the rate of expansion is much slower than a few months ago, when Tehran was assembling close to 200 centrifuges every two weeks.

As well, Iran continued to produce only negligible amounts of nuclear fuel with its centrifuges, far below the level usable for nuclear warheads, the report said.

"They have the knowledge to proceed much more quickly," said a U.N. official.

While Iran has denied stalling, the official and others suggested it could have decided to proceed at a slower pace as it increases its cooperation with agency investigators looking at past suspicious activities so as to reduce any sentiment to impose new U.N. sanctions.

Former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright and Jacqueline Shire (nasdaq: SHPGY - news - people ) of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said the slowdown could be a combination of both "technical difficulties" and "political considerations."

"Iran likely has managed to learn how to operate individual centrifuges and cascades adequately. However, it still may be struggling to operate a large number of cascades at the same time in parallel," they wrote in a report e-mailed to the AP. "In addition, Iran's leadership may have decided to slow work to overcome technical problems in order to forestall negative reactions that would lend support for further sanctions by the UN Security Council."

Another U.N official - who like his colleagues spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to media - also noted that construction of a plutonium-producing reactor in the city of Arak had slowed in recent months.

He said "design difficulties, getting equipment, materials and components, and fuel technology, plus perhaps some political considerations," could be causing the delay.

The allusion to "political considerations" appeared to be linked to reports that Iranian officials might be considering stopping construction of the Arak reactor in another sign of goodwill calculated to blunt the threat of new U.N. sanctions.

But the report focused less on these issue and more on the already publicized Iran-IAEA cooperation plan. In that plan, Iran agreed to answer questions from agency experts by December.

The U.N. officials - all of them familiar with Iran's nuclear file - declined to speculate on whether a clean bill that banishes suspicions about Iran's former nuclear programs and experiments would be enough to derail the threat of new U.N. sanctions.

Repeating the findings of the Iran-IAEA cooperation plan, the report said the agency felt that information provided by Iran on past small-scale plutonium experiments had "resolved" agency concerns about the issue.

In Tehran, the official Islamic Republic News Agency cited senior nuclear official Mohammad Saeedi as saying that conclusion "ended all the baseless U.S. accusations against Iran over reprocessing plutonium."

The agency report also noted cooperation on other issues, while specifying that Tehran still needed to satisfy the agency's curiosity about its enrichment technology and traces of highly enriched uranium at a facility linked to the military.

The report also said Iran agreed to study documentation from the agency on the "Green Salt Project" - a plan that the U.S. alleges links diverse components of a nuclear weapons program, including uranium enrichment, high explosives testing and a missile re-entry vehicle.

Diplomats told the AP last year that the agency was made aware of the alleged program by U.S. intelligence.