The Hindu : Iran has no n-bomb plan: IAEA report

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2003

International

International

Iran has no n-bomb plan: IAEA report

VIENNA NOV. 11. The U.N. nuclear watchdog in a confidential report said it had not found evidence of an atomic bomb programme in Iran, but Teheran was associated with activity often connected with arms like plutonium production.

The U.S. had accused Iran of using a civilian nuclear energy programme as a front to build a bomb. Iran denied this and said it was forced to hide some nuclear activities because of decades of sanctions, which it said were illegal. "To date there is no evidence that (Iran's) previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons programme," said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday.

"However, given Iran's past pattern of concealment, it will take some time before the agency is able to conclude that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes."

On September 12, the IAEA Board of Governors gave Iran an October 31 deadline to come clean about its nuclear programme. To meet the deadline, Iran made a number of admissions about having hidden activities that could be connected to weapons production. "Iran has admitted that it produced small amounts of low enriched uranium using both centrifuges and laser enrichment processes... and that it had failed to report a large number of conversion, fabrication and irradiation activities involving nuclear material, including the separation of a small amount of plutonium," the report said.The IAEA said Iran also acknowledged some tests "using small amounts of (uranium hexafluoride) had been conducted in 1999 and 2002''. The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment on the contents of the report. — Reuters

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International