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Iran ends voluntary cooperation on nukes
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-06 06:45
Iran ended all voluntary cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency
Sunday, saying it would start uranium enrichment and bar surprise inspections of
its facilities after being reported to the Security Council over fears it is
seeking an atomic bomb.
However, the Islamic republic left the door open for further negotiations
over its nuclear program and, in an apparent softening of its position, said it
was willing to discuss Moscow's proposal to shift large-scale enrichment
operations to Russian territory in an effort to allay suspicions.
Iranian Foreign
Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, speaks with media during a press conference
in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Feb. 5 2006. [AP] |
A day earlier, an Iranian official at the International Atomic Energy Agency
meeting in Vienna, Austria, said that proposal was "dead." The comment was made
after the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors voted to report Iran to the
council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions.
"The door for negotiations is still open," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid
Reza Asefi said Sunday.
But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the West "can't do a thing" to stop
Iran's progress.
"The era of coercion and domination has ended," Ahmadinejad was quoted as
saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "Issue as many resolutions
like this as you want and make yourself happy. You can't prevent the progress of
the Iranian nation.
"In the name of the IAEA they want to visit all our nuclear facilities and
learn our defense capabilities, but we won't allow them to do this."
Uranium enriched to a low degree can be used for nuclear reactors, while
highly enriched uranium is suitable for warheads. Iran insists it only wants to
generate electricity, but the United States and some of its allies contend
Tehran is trying to build a weapon.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Sunday that Iran had ended all
voluntary cooperation with the IAEA. The action, ordered by Ahmadinejad, was
required by a law passed last year.
The announcement means Iran has resumed uranium enrichment and no longer will
allow snap IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities, a voluntary measure it
allowed in recent years in a goodwill gesture to build trust under a protocol to
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
"We do not have any obligation toward the additional protocol (anymore),"
Mottaki said.
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