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Iran Defiant On Nuclear Work After IAEA Resolution
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“Iran
will not accept any obligations concerning the suspension of
enrichment,” said Rowhani
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TEHRAN, September 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) –
Iran
reacted on Sunday, September 19, with defiance to a UN atomic
agency’s resolution demanding Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment, threatening not to allow tough
inspections of its nuclear sites.
“Iran
will not accept any obligations concerning the suspension of
enrichment,” Iran's top nuclear official Hassan Rowhani said at a press conference
after the International Atomic Energy Agency passed the resolution.
Rowhani
said Iran would only accept a suspension “through negotiations and not through
a resolution”, adding that such a move would have to be a
“voluntary decision,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
On
Saturday, September 18, the IAEA called on
Iran
to “immediately” suspend all activities related to the enrichment
of uranium and set a November 25 deadline for a full review of
Iran
's nuclear activities.
No
specific IAEA action was stipulated, as the resolution's paragraph
said the IAEA board “will decide whether or not further steps are
appropriate” instead of speaking of steps being “required” as
the United States had wished.
“The
resolution was adopted by consensus, without a vote,” IAEA
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters at a meeting of the IAEA's
35-nation board of governors, as the board voted not to consider the
non-aligned movement's amendments to the text.
US
delegation chief Jackie Sanders said “this resolution sends an
unmistakable signal to Iran that continuing its nuclear weapons
program will bring it inevitably before the Security Council.”
The
United States
in particular accuses
Iran
of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
But
Tehran
denies
the accusation, saying it merely wants to produce fuel to generate
nuclear energy.
In
June, the UN nuclear watchdog admitted it had wrongly
accused
Iran
of withholding information about importing magnets for advanced
centrifuges.
NPT
Threatened
Rowhani
also warned the IAEA that
Iran
would halt its application of a key safeguards treaty if the nuclear
dossier was referred to the UN Security Council, a move the
United States
is pushing for.
“We
are committed to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) ... and
will continue to voluntarily apply the additional protocol. But we
will stop applying the additional protocol if the case is sent to the
Security Council,” Rowhani warned.
He
also threatened that the parliament could also push for a pull-out
from the NPT if the UN Security Council moved to sanction the country.
Iran
signed the
additional protocol to the NPT in December last year, but
parliament has yet to ratify it. The text obliges
Iran
to accept tougher IAEA inspections, including short-notice visits to
even undeclared facilities.
Iran
suspended enrichment in October 2003 as a confidence-building measure
but has continued support activities such as building the centrifuges
that refine the uranium.
It
has also caused alarm by saying that it would be carrying out the
first stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, making the uranium gas that is
the feed for centrifuges.
Rowhani
said the enrichment work, at a Uranium Conversion Facility in the
central city of Isfahan, was going ahead -- as was the construction of
a heavy water reactor at Arak and enrichment preparations at Natanz.
The
resolution passed Saturday called on
Iran
to halt such work.
“People
should know that the suspension is not a halt to our activities. In
one year we have obtained everything we wanted,” said Rowhani, who
heads the Islamic republic's Supreme National Security Council.
“We
refuse to stop all enrichment related activities.”
Rowhani
also accused Europe's “big three” --
Britain
, France and
Germany
-- of breaking an accord on
Iran
's cooperation with the IAEA that was struck in October 2003.
“The
three Europeans have violated the terms of the accord regarding
enrichment because the suspension of enrichment was voluntary,” he
said, without saying if
Tehran
had abandoned the deal.
It
was the three European nations which were behind the tough resolution
passed at the IAEA on Saturday.
“We
have difficult days ahead of us,” Rowhani commented.
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