Iran to act on uranium enrichment, UN asserts

DAVOS, Switzerland: The head of the UN nuclear inspection agency said Friday that Iranian officials had said they planned to begin installing equipment next month in an industrial-scale plant to enrich uranium, escalating the country's confrontation with the Security Council, which has demanded a full suspension of the production of nuclear material and authorized mild sanctions against the country.

The announcement by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was coupled with a plea to both Tehran and Western nations for all sides to take a "timeout," a request that appeared to be an effort to head off a larger confrontation in coming months.

"Enough flexing muscles, enough calling names," the agency's director- general, said in an interview with reporters at the World Economic Forum's conference here. "It's time to engage."He proposed that the United Nations suspended its sanctions against Iran, while the Iranians would simultaneously suspend enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce the fuel for nuclear weapons, though the Iranians deny that is their goal.

Nuclear experts and American officials say that while the announcement was worrisome, it may be a bluff. Iran has run into significant difficulties in assembling the centrifuges that enrich uranium at a test facility.

A year ago, it promised to have 3,000 centrifuges running by around this time; instead, it is just beginning to install that equipment at an underground facility at Natanz. But clearly, ElBaradei is concerned that once that process begins, it will be difficult to halt — and that Iranian officials would be loathe to dismantle their facility once they began to construct it. He said that if it is constructed, a peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff would be much harder to achieve.Similarly, he is concerned that the facility, once under construction, could become a military target for the United States or Israel.

Such a strike would be "absolutely bonkers," he said, noting that while it might destroy buildings, it would not deprive Iran of the technological expertise to pursue its nuclear ambitions. "It would only strengthen the hand of hard-liners," he said. "They would simply go underground."He said he worried that further sanctions against Iran, which the United Nations has threatened to impose next month if Tehran does not halt enrichment, "is only going to lead to an escalation." Given what inspectors know about Iran's current capabilities, ElBaradei said he believed the Iranians were three to eight years away from being able to manufacture a nuclear device.The United States said it would stick to its insistence that Iran stop enrichment as a pre-condition for negotiations.

The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormick, said the reports that Iran plans to install 3,000 centrifuges showed that it continues to defy international pressure."We'll see what Dr. ElBaradei has to say," McCormick said at a briefing in Washington. "More importantly, we'll see what the Iranians do; they continue in provocative behavior."He said the preliminary sanctions, which ban the import and export of material used in uranium enrichment, reprocessing and ballistic missiles, appear to be having some effect in Iran. While Tehran has maintained a defiant tone, there is evidence of an internal split over its posture.

Two hard-line newspapers that reflect the views of the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently demanded that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stay away from nuclear issues because his comments were deepening Iran's isolation.

Iran's relations with the UN agency have deteriorated since the sanctions were approved last month. Tehran has demanded that the agency remove the official who oversees inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities, and it has barred inspectors from all countries that supported sanctions. It is not clear how much influence ElBaradei can exercise over this conflict, now that it has moved to the United Nations Security Council.But he appears to believe there is support for his proposal.

A diplomat at the agency, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said he had sounded out diplomats from Germany and France, and received encouraging responses.
The two, along with Britain, have led the talks with Iran over its nuclear program.

ElBaradei has also consulted with Russia, which favors a more conciliatory approach. But he did not discuss the idea with American officials before making it public here, the diplomat said. ElBaradei suggested the United States show more flexibility in another nuclear confrontation, with North Korea. The North Koreans have demanded that the United States drop financial sanctions against them as a condition for reviving talks over their nuclear program.
American and North Korean officials met earlier this month in Berlin, in a one-on-one meeting meant to lay the groundwork for a revival of multiparty talks in Beijing in the coming weeks.But there was no indication in Berlin that Washington plans to lift those measures, which it says stem from North Korea's counterfeiting of American dollars and laundering of proceeds from drug-running. "You cannot just stick to your guns," ElBaradei said of the American position. "A self-righteous approach gets you nowhere."Separately, Iran said Friday that it would bar all IAEA inspectors from countries that voted for the UN Security Council sanctions agreed to last month in response to the refusal by Tehran to heed a council deadline to suspend enrichment, The Associated Press reported.The announcement came after Iran said it had rejected 38 names from an IAEA list of inspectors, insisting that it had the right to approve individual members of the teams."Inspectors from countries behind the illogical resolution against peaceful nuclear activities of Iran will find no place in Iran if their countries do not go back to a wise and legal way," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an unidentified Iranian diplomat as saying, referring to the sanctions resolution.