Tehran, March 11: Iran’s permanent envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has denounced a British draft resolution as a diplomatic failure for London at the agency’s Board of Governors, noting that unresolved legal issues have been left unanswered in the proposal.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh made the remarks after IAEA’s Board of Governors approved the Nuclear Fuel Assurance Plan despite a series of unresolved legal and technical questions related to the British draft proposal as well as the lack of any assurances for supplying the fuel, a Media correspondent in Vienna reported.
A US proposal on the establishment of a Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank run by the IAEA was approved at a board meeting in December while a similar project was already launched in Russia.
The new proposal, approved by 26 votes in favor, eight abstentions and one absence, does not involve the setting up of a uranium reserve that states could tap into in case their fuel supplies were cut off.
Under the plan, governments of the supplying country and the receiving state would sign a bilateral agreement with the consent of the UN nuclear body in order to guarantee that shipments of fuel would not be interrupted due to non-commercial reasons.
The idea, purportedly, seeks to reduce the risk of proliferation, but some developing countries such as Iran that have already mastered the fuel cycle process, have opposed the move, arguing that it would restrict their progress in the field of nuclear technology and thereby violate the right to a full access to the nuclear fuel cycle.
Meanwhile, Soltanieh reiterated that the voting in the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors was a “diplomatic failure” for Britain, and further turned the spotlight on a series of unanswered questions and ambiguities raised by 131 members of the Group 77.
“In spite of the fact that the majority of member states of Group 77 and NAM (the Non-Aligned Movement) have expressed serious questions and concerns, the UK did not give enough chance this time for further discussion in order to remove ambiguities,” Iran’s IAEA envoy told Media on Thursday.
“In fact, today, we were witnessing another, in fact, scene of polarization and politicization of the Board of Governors, and in spite of the wish of the United Kingdom, the UK was not able to get the consensus and there was a serious failure for the United Kingdom by pushing for the vote, the proposal,” Soltanieh added.
“Fortunately, a total of 130 member states of the Group 77 in a statement at IAEA’s Board of Governors reiterated on the indisputable rights of all countries in choosing fuel-cycle option, including uranium enrichment,” he noted.
He went on to say that it is high time for the Board of Governors to focuses on assurance of supply by initiating sincere negotiations to come up with a legally binding measure on assuring access to a fuel supply, a view that is also shared by many analysts.
“The western countries which posses nuclear weapons want this proposal to be a proof so that they can keep their control over the uranium monopoly,” Ali Heydar Yurtsever of Anadolu newspaper told Media.
Soltanieh had also urged all member states to participate in productive negotiations without running the risk of further polarization among members.
——–Agencies