The New York Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: April 29, 2006
VIENNA, April 28 — Iran has drastically curtailed cooperation with nuclear inspectors over the past month as it has sped forward with its nuclear enrichment, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.
The nuclear agency has succeeded in pushing Iran gradually over time to disclose bits and pieces of its nuclear program. But this time around Iran has taken only minimal steps — and to the West, insufficient ones — to cooperate with the agency.
”After more than three years of agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern,” the agency’s report said. ”Any progress in that regard requires full transparency and active cooperation by Iran.”
The report listed case after case where Iran had done nothing during a 30-day grace period to provide information that might clarify whether its nuclear activity is for civilian purposes, as it claims.
The agency, for example, has repeatedly asked Iran over the last three years to answer questions and provide documents and access on a wide range of issues as a way to build confidence that it did not have a hidden weapons program.
Since February, when the 35-nation board of the United Nations agency decided to report the case to the Security Council, Iran has severely curtailed its cooperation, halting voluntary visits to certain nuclear-related sites not covered under Iran’s treaty obligations.
For example, ”Gaps remain in the agency’s knowledge” about the scope of Iran’s centrifuge program, the report said. ”With the information we have, we cannot proceed any further,” one senior official told reporters about the centrifuge dossiers. ”We are stuck.”
The official ticked off a list of other areas where Iran had rebuffed the agency’s requests for information, saying, ”We haven’t had any discussions in those areas in the last month.” He added that such a tactic of minimal cooperation made it extremely difficult for the agency to verify whether Iran has secret, undeclared nuclear programs.
Indeed, the report referred to other information gaps that left the agency ”unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”
The agency has also failed to get an explanation of a surprising boast by President Ahmadinejad this month that Iran was conducting research on the P-2 centrifuge method of making atomic fuel, a technology that Iran had previously declared it had abandoned.
Instead of providing information and access on the array of issues, in a letter to the agency delivered Thursday afternoon Iran said it would give the agency a timetable for cooperation in three weeks — but only if ”the Iran nuclear dossier will remain, in full, in the framework of the I.A.E.A. and under its safeguards.”
The letter is interpreted by some agency officials as a veiled threat that Iran could withdraw completely from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and evidence that Iran is stalling for time, either to test the will of other nations or to try to restart negotiations — but only on its own terms.
Mr. Aghazadeh, who is also a vice president and a former oil minister, emphasized the need for more time to talk, saying, ”We are willing to negotiate about the worries of the world and about removing the ambiguities about the nature and scope of our nuclear program.”
The agency’s report confirmed that Iran had completed a system of 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its plant at Natanz in March, adding that another two systems, or cascades, of the same size were under construction there.
The report said the agency had taken samples earlier this month at Natanz that ”tend to confirm” the enrichment level of 3.6 percent declared by Iran — the level needed to make electricity.
Uranium must be about 90 percent pure for use in bomb-making, and thousands of centrifuges are needed to make enough for a weapons program. Nevertheless, the development is worrisome to nuclear experts.
Despite reports that Iran has had problems in getting its centrifuges to work, the senior official who discussed the report said: ”What is relevant is that they got the first 164-centrifuge cascade up and running, and managed to produce low-enriched uranium. The 164 centrifuges continue to spin, as far as we know.”
The report also said Iran may have received plutonium, which can be used to produce electricity or to make weapons, from a secret source.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article, William J. Broad from New York and Nazila Fathi from Tehran.
【Related】
Iran Says to Allow Inspections if U.N. Drops Case (April 29, 2006)
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