Moscow, November 17: It is “premature” to say that diplomatic efforts aimed at defusing tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme have failed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“I would say that it is premature to say that these efforts have not been crowned with success,” Lavrov said.
“We are working for the agreements that were reached last month in Vienna… to be fully implemented, and we are aiming all of our efforts precisely at this,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
The UN atomic watchdog demanded Monday more information from Iran about the purpose of a nuclear site.
The International Atomic Energy Agency also said it had been told by Iran in a letter that a new site near the holy city of Qom should be operational in 2011.
“Iran’s declaration of the new facility reduces the level of confidence in the absence of other nuclear facilities under construction and gives rise to questions about whether there were any other nuclear facilities in Iran which (have) not been declared to the agency,” said the new IAEA report.
“Iran’s explanation about the purpose of the facility and the chronology of its design and construction requires further clarification,” it said, confirming that uranium enrichment activities continued.
Under the UN-backed deal, Iran would rely on Russia and France to process low-enriched uranium to fuel a Tehran reactor that makes medical isotopes.
In its first official report since IAEA experts inspected the Qom site last month, the watchdog said Tehran’s delay in disclosure “does not contribute to the building of confidence.”
The agency said it had acquired satellite images indicating some sort of construction work had taken place there between 2002 and 2004 and had resumed in 2006.
Iran said the site was planned as a back-up plant should the Natanz plant be bombed, for example, and work on turning it into such a facility began in the second half of 2007.
Even if that were true, the IAEA stated: “Iran’s failure to notify the agency of the new facility until September 2009 was inconsistent with its obligations.”
During the visit to the Qom site last month, IAEA inspectors verified that the plant “was built to contain 16 cascades with a total of approximately 3,000 (uranium-enriching) centrifuges,” the report stated.
The Natanz plant currently has around 8,000 centrifuges installed.
No centrifuges had been installed in Qom, but the plant was “at an advanced stage of construction,” the IAEA said, adding that Iran gave the inspectors “access to all areas of the facility.”
The IAEA said it told Tehran it still had questions about how the facility fitted into Iran’s nuclear programme and had requested access to the plant project manager and those responsible for its design.
Tehran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Iran would continue uranium enrichment and dismissed the constant stream of IAEA reports as “repetitive and tedious.”
“Iran will continue to exercise its right to peaceful use of nuclear energy, including enrichment,” Soltanieh told Fars, Iran’s semi-official news agency.
US President Barack Obama warned Iran Tuesday of “consequences” if it failed to assure the that its nuclear ambitions were peaceful..
But standing alongside Obama after a meeting in Beijing, Chinese President Hu Jintao also said “dialogue and negotiations” were needed to resolve Iran’s atomic standoff.
“We agreed that the Islamic republic of Iran must provide assurances to the international community that its nuclear programme is peaceful and transparent, Obama said after meeting Hu on his first visit to China.
“On this point, our two nations and the rest of our P5-plus-1 partners are unified,” Obama said.
“Iran has an opportunity to present and demonstrate its peaceful intentions, but if it fails to take this opportunity there will be consequences.”
China has repeatedly said it opposes sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, although experts say Beijing could make concessions to protect its wider interests.
“We both stressed that to uphold the international nuclear non-proliferation regime and to appropriately resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations is very important to stability in the Middle East and in the Gulf region,” Hu said.
Iran insists it has the right to develop nuclear technology, which it says is aimed at generating energy for its growing population.
Although Iran has oil, it is still dependent on petrol imports to meet about 40 percent of domestic consumption.
Israel is the only country in the Middle Ease that actually has nuclear weapons.
Observers say due the strong Jewish and pro-Israel lobbies in the US and some European countries, these countries have taken a hypocritical stance in relation to nuclear issues in the region.
Tehran had repeatedly protested against Israeli and US war threats, warning them that it would retaliate in the event of any strike against Iran.
—Agencies