IAEA’s Iran report draws global concern, calls for sanctions

BERLIN - Governments across the world reacted angrily and expressed their concern Friday after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had said in a report that there was evidence that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned Iran could face new sanctions if it continues to conceal details of its controversial nuclear programme.

The international community “will not put up with assurances” if Iran continues its unwillingness to enter into “an honest dialogue”, the minister told a news conference in Berlin.

Together with the five permanent UN Security Council members China, Britain, France, Russia and the US, Germany forms a group of countries that has tried to solve the Iranian nuclear issue through a double strategy of sanctions and offering negotiations.

Westerwelle was speaking a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed concern for the first time that Iran is currently working on a nuclear warhead. Previous reports had referred to past activities.

Iran’s envoy at the IAEA said that allegations about nuclear weapons studies had been raised by the IAEA in the past and that they “are therefore nothing new but gradually becoming tiresome”.

Ambassador Ali-Asghar Soltanieh claimed in an interview with ISNA news agency that IAEA chief Yukiya Amano confirmed the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear projects in the document.

This view was not shared in Paris, where a foreign ministry spokesman said the report “demonstrates how urgent it is to act with determination to respond to Iran’s lack of cooperation”.

In Moscow, foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that “Iran must rebut this suspicion”, and should cooperate with the IAEA.

Russia has not ruled out giving its assent on Security Council to a fourth round of sanctions on Iran.

The IAEA report made clear that Iran did not comply with the Security Council’s binding resolution that call for a halt to uranium enrichment, but had instead started to enrich nuclear material at higher levels, in order to produce fuel for a medical-use reactor in Tehran.

The US found many worrying revelations in a new report from the global nuclear watchdog.

Referring to Iran’s new enrichment site at Fordow, which was revealed only last September, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday: “There is no explanation for that facility that is consistent with the needs of a civilian nuclear programme.”

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said it was difficult to know if Iran is currently operating a weapons programme or not.

“It is clear, at least in my view, that until a few years ago they had a weapons programme,” he told Swedish radio news.