casper
11-26-2009, 10:47 AM
Exclusive: ElBaradei says West won't meet Iran atom demand
By Mark Heinrich
VIENNA - Iran's demand for changes to a nuclear fuel deal is unacceptable to the West because it could mean Tehran keeping enough enriched uranium for potential use in a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency chief said on Wednesday.
In a rare interview, Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters U.N. inspectors had no proof of more covert nuclear sites in Iran but a newly revealed enrichment site made little sense for civilian or military ends and mistrust had grown.
Speaking five days before he retires after 12 years as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei said he was urging Western powers to wait for Iran to take a viable stance on the fuel plan because there was no imminent Iranian nuclear threat.
He said recourse to harsher sanctions against Iran, hinted at last week by Western powers angered by the fuel deal holdup, was likely to be counterproductive. He said U.N. resolutions against Iran were largely "expressions of frustration."
To prevent Iran nearing the ability to build atom bombs and win time for talks on a lasting settlement of the dispute over its nuclear ambitions, ElBaradei in October drafted a plan for Tehran to send 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France. There it would be made into special fuel for a nuclear medicine reactor that will run out of it next year.
The draft deal has stumbled over Iran's insistence on giving up no LEU until the fuel reaches its soil.
This defeats the goal of the six Western powers -- Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Russia and China -- of cutting Iran's LEU reserves to less than the quantity need to make a bomb if refined to high purity.
"They are ready to put material under IAEA control on an (Iranian) island in the Persian Gulf. But the whole idea as I explained to them, to defuse this crisis, is to take the material out of Iran," said ElBaradei.
"I do not think (Iran's counter-proposal) will work as far as the West is concerned."
ElBaradei, still trying to broker a compromise, said there had been no action to break the impasse for weeks. Iran had yet to give him a formal answer to his plan as promised a month ago.
ElBaradei welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's readiness to wait until the end of the year for Iran to give ground before considering further sanctions, but said such attempted coercion could backfire by bolstering the position of Iranian nuclear hardliners.
"NO DURABLE SOLUTION"
"We have gone through a lot of (U.N.) Security Council resolutions, a lot of (IAEA) board of governor resolutions. To me, a lot of these are just expressions of frustration that things are not moving. But I don't see them frankly to be helping in finding a durable solution," he said.
ElBaradei suggested that a six-power attempt to have the IAEA's 35-nation governing body pass a resolution later this week critical of Iran over its hitherto secret second enrichment site would do little to win greater cooperation from Tehran.
He said Iran must clarify the chronology and original purpose of the site in a mountain bunker at Fordow near Qom, saying it did not make sense as a standalone site for producing civilian nuclear energy.
By Mark Heinrich
VIENNA - Iran's demand for changes to a nuclear fuel deal is unacceptable to the West because it could mean Tehran keeping enough enriched uranium for potential use in a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency chief said on Wednesday.
In a rare interview, Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters U.N. inspectors had no proof of more covert nuclear sites in Iran but a newly revealed enrichment site made little sense for civilian or military ends and mistrust had grown.
Speaking five days before he retires after 12 years as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei said he was urging Western powers to wait for Iran to take a viable stance on the fuel plan because there was no imminent Iranian nuclear threat.
He said recourse to harsher sanctions against Iran, hinted at last week by Western powers angered by the fuel deal holdup, was likely to be counterproductive. He said U.N. resolutions against Iran were largely "expressions of frustration."
To prevent Iran nearing the ability to build atom bombs and win time for talks on a lasting settlement of the dispute over its nuclear ambitions, ElBaradei in October drafted a plan for Tehran to send 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France. There it would be made into special fuel for a nuclear medicine reactor that will run out of it next year.
The draft deal has stumbled over Iran's insistence on giving up no LEU until the fuel reaches its soil.
This defeats the goal of the six Western powers -- Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Russia and China -- of cutting Iran's LEU reserves to less than the quantity need to make a bomb if refined to high purity.
"They are ready to put material under IAEA control on an (Iranian) island in the Persian Gulf. But the whole idea as I explained to them, to defuse this crisis, is to take the material out of Iran," said ElBaradei.
"I do not think (Iran's counter-proposal) will work as far as the West is concerned."
ElBaradei, still trying to broker a compromise, said there had been no action to break the impasse for weeks. Iran had yet to give him a formal answer to his plan as promised a month ago.
ElBaradei welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's readiness to wait until the end of the year for Iran to give ground before considering further sanctions, but said such attempted coercion could backfire by bolstering the position of Iranian nuclear hardliners.
"NO DURABLE SOLUTION"
"We have gone through a lot of (U.N.) Security Council resolutions, a lot of (IAEA) board of governor resolutions. To me, a lot of these are just expressions of frustration that things are not moving. But I don't see them frankly to be helping in finding a durable solution," he said.
ElBaradei suggested that a six-power attempt to have the IAEA's 35-nation governing body pass a resolution later this week critical of Iran over its hitherto secret second enrichment site would do little to win greater cooperation from Tehran.
He said Iran must clarify the chronology and original purpose of the site in a mountain bunker at Fordow near Qom, saying it did not make sense as a standalone site for producing civilian nuclear energy.