WORLD / IAEA
Iran offers IAEA information on uranium project
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-24 09:11
Iran has offered UN inspectors information about a shadowy
uranium-processing project that Western intelligence has linked to
missile warhead design and tests with high explosives, a senior diplomat
said on Thursday.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad waves as he begins his speech in
Farsan, about 340 miles south of Tehran, February 23, 2006. [Reuters]
The offer was made with the clock ticking toward a March 6 meeting of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that could result in U.N.
Security Council action against Iran for failing to clear up doubts about
its nuclear program.
The diplomat, close to the IAEA but asking not to be named, said IAEA
inspectors would be in Tehran this weekend to check the information on
the "Green Salt Project."
This could form an important part of a report IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei
is to circulate to the UN nuclear watchdog's board members early next
week in advance of their March meeting.
Diplomats hope ElBaradei's report will be a conclusive account of three
years of IAEA investigations into whether Iran's nuclear energy drive is
wholly peaceful or not.
Word of the Green Salt Project first emerged in a summary of
investigations by an ElBaradei deputy given to a February 2-4 IAEA board
meeting that resulted in a vote to report Iran's case to the Security
Council.
WESTERN CONCERN
The vote reflected growing Western concern Iran may be secretly trying to
build atomic bombs in breach of commitments to the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for
power generation.
The summary by Olli Heinonen, ElBaradei's deputy for safeguards issues,
said three aspects of the Green Salt Project "could have military-nuclear
dimensions and appear to have administrative interconnections."
Iran has dismissed the intelligence as "baseless allegations" but
Heinonen's report said Tehran had pledged to provide clarification later.
Green salt is an intermediate product in the conversion of uranium ore
into gas for enrichment into nuclear fuel.
A link between uranium conversion and explosives tests would concern the
IAEA since the main hurdle in making an atomic bomb is designing a ring
of conventional explosives to compress nuclear material in a warhead core
to ignite a nuclear chain reaction.
The IAEA also has a range of questions about Iran's procurement of "dual
use" equipment -- components applicable to both civilian and military
nuclear ends.
Asked about the Green Salt development, a European Union diplomat told
Reuters:
"The February 4 board vote made very clear what Iran had to do -- provide
transparency that has been long overdue and essential to regaining
international confidence in its nuclear intentions, as Dr ElBaradei has
repeatedly said."
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