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Iran accused of resuming nuclear testing |
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Iran is being accused by some big powers of Europe of breaking its pledge to the international community and resuming testing a facility for converting uranium, a key part of the process of enrichment, for use as fuel or in a nuclear bomb. On the eve of the meeting of the three EU countries, France, Britain and Germany, in Paris to discuss Teheran’s nuclear programme, European diplomats in Vienna, headquarters of the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA, said, Iran has resumed building and installing equipment that can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Under international pressure last year, the Islamic Republic agreed to stop enriching uranium and stop assembling centrifuges, the equipment used for the enrichment process. In turn, France, Britain and Germany dangled the prospect of providing it with peaceful nuclear technology. Speaking on conditions of anonymity, some diplomats in Vienna alleged that several weeks ago, Iranian officials broke seals placed on the equipment by the IAEA to monitor the moratorium on assembling and installation of centrifuges and then restarted the process. Some observers are comparing it with the removal of IAEA seals on nuclear equipment by North Korea two years ago as it expelled agency inspectors and declared itself no longer bound by the NPT.
Iran denies wanting atomic arms and says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
A two-page intelligence report being circulated among diplomats in Vienna says, Iranian agents are negotiating with a Russian company to buy a substance that can boost nuclear explosions in atomic weapons. The report identified the substance as “deuterium gas”, which is used as a tracer molecule in medicine and biochemistry but also in heavy water reactors of the type Iran is building. It can also be combined with tritium and used as a “booster” in nuclear fusion bombs of the implosion type. Some envoys linked to the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, however, said, buying deuterium alone was not evidence of intent to acquire a weapons capability. They cautioned that the report appeared designed to persuade nations who are not convinced Iran wants the bomb.
In the meanwhile, after Iraq, Iran may be the new target of President Bush if he is re-elected in the November elections. The bipartisan panel probing the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, has, among other things, spotlighted Iran’s links to the al-Qaeda organisation. It alleged that Iranian operatives maintained contacts with at least eight of the 19 men who crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The commission said, “intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al-Qaeda figures” after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996. The Commission’s report is largely based on a 2001 memo discovered buried in the files of the US National Security Agency. The Memo said that Iranian border inspectors were instructed not to place stamps in the passports of al-Qaeda fighters from Saudi Arabia who were traveling from bin Laden’s camps through Iran.
Meanwhile, some US Senators have sponsored a Bill aimed at toppling Teheran’s clerical rulers by supporting opposition groups inside and outside the country. The Iran Freedom and Support Act authorizes the US President to provide ten million dollars to foreign and domestic Iranian pro-democracy groups such as radio and television networks in order to promote regime change in the Islamic State. Iran hit back branding it as “day dreaming”.
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