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By Haaretz Service and Reuters
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Friday that
Iran is likely to reach the point of no return for
nuclear capability within one year and called on
Russia to stop providing assistance, Israel Radio
reported.
Shalom made the comments to
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister
Yuri Federtov who is visiting
Israel.
A nuclear capable Iran will
change the strategic balance in
the region, he added.
In comments aired earlier
Friday, the head of the United Nations nuclear
watchdog said that Iran had shopped for nuclear
components on the international black market
and called on Tehran to be more "proactive" and
"transparent."
Meanwhile, a European Union official said Friday
that the body's foreign policy chief Javier
Solana will press Iran to agree to snap
inspections of its nuclear sites facilities as
a key demand for closer EU trade ties.
Asked if Solana, who arrived in Tehran on
Friday, would press Iran to sign up to more
inspections, his spokeswoman Christina Gallach
told Reuters: "No doubt about that. Full
cooperation with the International Atomic
Energy Agency is requested and sought from the
Iranian authorities."
"The position of the European Union is that Iran
has to sign the Additional Protocol," she
said.
Gallach said the nuclear issue was "very high on
the agenda", but said the EU also wanted to see
progress on three other areas - human rights,
its attitude to the Middle East peace process
and cooperation in the fight against terrorism
- for progress in talks on a trade and
cooperation agreement.
Under a trade pact, Iran would have greater
access to the European Union, already a key
Iranian trading partner.
"We are all worried that on the four issues we
haven't seen enough progress, and in
particular, there is one concern which is the
nuclear one," Gallach said.
In an interview on the BBC television program
Hardtalk, International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei also said that
Iran's nuclear program had been going on far
longer than the agency had realized.
Although he was not certain of the countries
that made the equipment Iran had acquired on
the black market, ElBaradei said he had a
"pretty good idea" which ones they were.
"It could be one country, it could be more than
one country," ElBaradei said. "They [Iran] told
us they have got a lot of that stuff from the
black market. It is through intermediaries. It
is not directly from the country."
Media reports have named Pakistan, a nuclear
weapons state that has refused to sign the
nuclear 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as
one of countries whose nuclear technology Iran
is believed to be using.
Although he stopped short of accusing Tehran of
lying to the UN agency, ElBaradei said Iran had
failed to give the IAEA a complete picture of
its nuclear program, which Washington says is
merely a front for a secret atomic weapons
program.
"They have not really been fully transparent in
telling us in advance what was going on,"
ElBaradei said in the interview, recorded
Thursday and aired the following day.
Asked if he believed Iran was running a secret
weapons program, ElBaradei said: "It might be,
it might not be."
"I need to really get the Iranians to tell me
the full, complete story," he said. "And I
would like Iran to be more proactive, more
transparent."
He said that it would have been much easier to
verify Iran's insistence its nuclear programme
is peaceful if it had given the IAEA a complete
picture of its atomic plans from the
beginning.
"It would have been easier for us to complete
our job if we knew what was going on as early
as the mid 1980s," ElBaradei said. "Now we have
to go... 20 years back."
He repeated his call for Iran to quickly sign a
protocol giving the IAEA the right to carry out
intrusive, short notice inspections across the
country.
"The international community's getting very
concerned, very impatient," ElBaradei said
about the situation in Iran.
He also agreed that countries such as Iran,
pre-war Iraq and North Korea - what U.S.
President George W. Bush has branded the "axis
of evil" - have had a history of misleading the
world about their nuclear programs.
"They have been giving the international
community the runaround," he said.
The IAEA Board of Governors meets next month to
discuss the agency's recent inspections in
Iran. The United States is pushing the board to
declare Tehran in violation of its NPT nuclear
safeguards obligations and report it to the UN
Security Council, which can impose economic
sanctions.
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said
Thursday the Islamic Republic was ready to
start talks on allowing snap UN inspections of
its nuclear sites.
"We have written to the director-general [of the
International Atomic Energy Agency]) saying we
are ready to start negotiations on the
Additional Protocol," Kharrazi told CNN.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/334722.html
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Friday that
Iran is likely to reach the point of no return for
nuclear capability within one year and called on
Russia to stop providing assistance, Israel Radio
reported.
Shalom made the comments to
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister
Yuri Federtov who is visiting
Israel.
A nuclear capable Iran will
change the strategic balance in
the region, he added.
In comments aired earlier
Friday, the head of the United Nations nuclear
watchdog said that Iran had shopped for nuclear
components on the international black market
and called on Tehran to be more "proactive" and
"transparent."
Meanwhile, a European Union official said Friday
that the body's foreign policy chief Javier
Solana will press Iran to agree to snap
inspections of its nuclear sites facilities as
a key demand for closer EU trade ties.
Asked if Solana, who arrived in Tehran on
Friday, would press Iran to sign up to more
inspections, his spokeswoman Christina Gallach
told Reuters: "No doubt about that. Full
cooperation with the International Atomic
Energy Agency is requested and sought from the
Iranian authorities."
"The position of the European Union is that Iran
has to sign the Additional Protocol," she
said.
Gallach said the nuclear issue was "very high on
the agenda", but said the EU also wanted to see
progress on three other areas - human rights,
its attitude to the Middle East peace process
and cooperation in the fight against terrorism
- for progress in talks on a trade and
cooperation agreement.
Under a trade pact, Iran would have greater
access to the European Union, already a key
Iranian trading partner.
"We are all worried that on the four issues we
haven't seen enough progress, and in
particular, there is one concern which is the
nuclear one," Gallach said.
In an interview on the BBC television program
Hardtalk, International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei also said that
Iran's nuclear program had been going on far
longer than the agency had realized.
Although he was not certain of the countries
that made the equipment Iran had acquired on
the black market, ElBaradei said he had a
"pretty good idea" which ones they were.
"It could be one country, it could be more than
one country," ElBaradei said. "They [Iran] told
us they have got a lot of that stuff from the
black market. It is through intermediaries. It
is not directly from the country."
Media reports have named Pakistan, a nuclear
weapons state that has refused to sign the
nuclear 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as
one of countries whose nuclear technology Iran
is believed to be using.
Although he stopped short of accusing Tehran of
lying to the UN agency, ElBaradei said Iran had
failed to give the IAEA a complete picture of
its nuclear program, which Washington says is
merely a front for a secret atomic weapons
program.
"They have not really been fully transparent in
telling us in advance what was going on,"
ElBaradei said in the interview, recorded
Thursday and aired the following day.
Asked if he believed Iran was running a secret
weapons program, ElBaradei said: "It might be,
it might not be."
"I need to really get the Iranians to tell me
the full, complete story," he said. "And I
would like Iran to be more proactive, more
transparent."
He said that it would have been much easier to
verify Iran's insistence its nuclear programme
is peaceful if it had given the IAEA a complete
picture of its atomic plans from the
beginning.
"It would have been easier for us to complete
our job if we knew what was going on as early
as the mid 1980s," ElBaradei said. "Now we have
to go... 20 years back."
He repeated his call for Iran to quickly sign a
protocol giving the IAEA the right to carry out
intrusive, short notice inspections across the
country.
"The international community's getting very
concerned, very impatient," ElBaradei said
about the situation in Iran.
He also agreed that countries such as Iran,
pre-war Iraq and North Korea - what U.S.
President George W. Bush has branded the "axis
of evil" - have had a history of misleading the
world about their nuclear programs.
"They have been giving the international
community the runaround," he said.
The IAEA Board of Governors meets next month to
discuss the agency's recent inspections in
Iran. The United States is pushing the board to
declare Tehran in violation of its NPT nuclear
safeguards obligations and report it to the UN
Security Council, which can impose economic
sanctions.
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said
Thursday the Islamic Republic was ready to
start talks on allowing snap UN inspections of
its nuclear sites.
"We have written to the director-general [of the
International Atomic Energy Agency]) saying we
are ready to start negotiations on the
Additional Protocol," Kharrazi told CNN.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/334722.html
