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Iran poised to resume nuclear activities
TEHRAN - Iran said it will restart some sensitive nuclear activities that were frozen as part of a deal with the European Union, a move diplomats said would see the Islamic republic hauled before the UN Security Council. A top Iranian nuclear official said the country could "momentarily" announce the resumption of "a noticeable part" of uranium conversion work, a precursor to uranium enrichment. Iran's enrichment programme is the focus of international fears the clerical regime is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only wants to make atomic energy reactor fuel. "Based on the reviews and decisions which were made, we are going to restart a small part of the suspended activities," Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, a vice president and head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told state television. He said "probably a noticeable part of UCF", or work at a uranium conversion facility near the central city of Isfahan, would be resumed. Aghazadeh added that the "exact date of the restart will be given to me momentarily". The Isfahan facility is used to convert mined uranium "yellowcake" into uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) and then into uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a feed gas for centrifuges that carry out the highly sensitive enrichment process. Iran had agreed in a November 2004 deal with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium enrichment work, including conversion, as a "confidence building" gesture that kicked off negotiations aimed at settling the crisis. Enriched uranium, depending on its level of purity, can be used for peaceful power generation but also as the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran asserts it only wants to make reactor fuel and generate electricity. "The Iranians are well aware of the consequences," a European diplomat told AFP. The diplomat said that "if they do decide to resume conversion, or any other activity linked to the process of enrichment", the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, would be forced to "meet in the light of Iran's decision to violate its commitments". "The matter will be sent to the United Nations Security Council. This is something we have said all along," said the source. He said Iran had yet to inform the IAEA of its decisions to break the agency's seals at Isfahan and resume work, although top Iranian negotiator Cyrus Nasseri told AFP by telephone Thursday that he was at the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna "for discussions". The EU have been offering Iran a package of incentives in return for "objective guarantees" it will not develop weapons. But Iran has expressed frustration with the pace of the negotiations, which remain deadlocked over Iran's ambition to master the full nuclear fuel cycle and European demands that Iran abandon such work altogether. The stand-off has worsened after the so-called EU-3 last month rejected an Iranian proposal to begin a phased resumption of enrichment. Iran complained the talks were being deliberately dragged out so as to keep the freeze in place. Aghazadeh said Iran had every right to resume conversion work, even though it has stopped short of resuming enrichment itself. "The reason for this is that our suspension is voluntary, and legally (a resumption) does not need any permission or agreement," he said, adding a decision to resume certain activities would provide a "necessary balance" to the talks. The EU diplomat, who asked not to be named, said that if the matter does move from the IAEA to the Security Council, "the terms of the dispute will then change". "It will be made very clear that Iran has an interest in abandoning the enrichment process. But it does not automatically mean a (Security Council) resolution: a lot will depend on the attitude of the Iranians," the diplomat said. |
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