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Iran Addressing U.N. Nuclear Demands
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Iranians
protest Tehran’s bowing to nuclear demands (AFP)
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VIENNA,
October 31 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A spokeswoman for
the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Friday, October 31, the body expects
next week to receive a letter from Iran agreeing to sign an additional
protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The
additional Protocol means wider and unannounced international
inspections of the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
"Our
understanding is that we will be receiving the letter next week,"
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokeswoman Melissa Fleming
told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
announcement came only hours after the IAEA described Iran's
declaration on its atomic program as comprehensive but cautioned that
the jury is still out on its accuracy, as a crunch deadline falls
Friday for Tehran to prove it is not secretly making the bomb.
IAEA
chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in Canada Thursday that the report Iran
filed October 23, a week ahead of the IAEA deadline October 31 for
Iran to prove it is not making nuclear weapons, "looks
comprehensive."
He
stressed, however, that IAEA inspectors were "in Iran now,
verifying that declaration."
While
ElBaradei's comment is a positive step for Iran, Tehran still faces
the possibility the IAEA will judge it to be in non-compliance with
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and send the issue to the
U.N. Security Council, which could then impose sanctions.
Iran
admits in the report to failures in honoring nuclear safeguards
commitments, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's representative to the IAEA, told
AFP last week.
Salehi
said the failures involved "some lab tests" but he said they
were "not significant" and that "it is 100-percent
clear that Iran has never been involved in anything that would
indicate it was involved in a nuclear weapons program."
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ElBaradei
said the Iranian report "looks comprehensive"
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A
Western diplomat said Iran "was already in non-compliance in
September," when the IAEA set the deadline, giving Iran a last
chance to come clean on its nuclear program.
He
said some sort of non-compliance finding, even a
"non-condemnatory one", would be necessary.
Another
Western diplomat said that if Iran's report "does not include
mention of the Iranian military's involvement in the entire
program," then they would also be in non-compliance.
Nothing
definitive is expected to happen Friday. When the deadline runs out,
the U.N. agency is set to begin writing a report on Iranian
compliance, with the matter to be considered at an IAEA board of
governors meeting in Vienna on November 20.
IAEA
spokeswoman Fleming said Friday in Vienna that the agency feels the
report "appears to address all the areas of their nuclear program
and the questions that we put to them."
But
she said "a tremendous amount of follow-up work will be required
to determine the report's completeness and accuracy."
IAEA
officials have said it could take months to verify the Iranian report.
A
key question is whether traces of highly enriched uranium found by
IAEA inspectors had come from an enrichment program that could make
weapons-grade material or had come from contaminated equipment that
had been imported, as Iran pleas.
Iran
seized the diplomatic initiative when it delivered its report to the
IAEA last week that it said answered all the agency's questions.
However,
Iran has yet to meet IAEA demands for it to suspend uranium enrichment
or formally notify the agency of its intention to sign an additional
protocol for unlimited inspections.
The
IAEA has been investigating Iran's nuclear program since February but
Tehran only issued the report after reaching an agreement when the Foreign
Ministers of Britain, France and Germany visited Tehran October
21.
For
its part, the United States said Wednesday that Washington expects
Iran to meet its international commitments.
"We've
said that there are three key aspects involved here for Iran to meet
its obligations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
"They need to implement - sign and implement the additional
protocol; cooperate fully with the IAEA; and once and for all, suspend
their uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities."
Iran
repeated Friday that it would meet its commitments, including signing
the additional protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty allowing
virtually unannounced inspections of nuclear sites.
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