Outcry as Iran resumes nuclear research

IRAN removed UN seals on uranium enrichment equipment and resumed nuclear research yesterday, defying demands it maintain a two-year freeze on its nuclear programme.

The move sparked an outcry from the United States and Europe.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran plans to enrich uranium as part of its experiments with the nuclear fuel cycle. An IAEA statement issued in Vienna, Austria, said Iran told the agency the scale of its enrichment work would be limited.

US officials denounced Iran’s move, calling it a step toward creating material for nuclear bombs. Germany’s foreign minister raised doubts over the future of European-led negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, questioning whether there remains any basis for more talks.

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern criticised Iran’s decision. He called on the Middle Eastern country to reconsider the move and call a halt to its nuclear programme.

Mr Ahern said the decision was inconsistent with demands by the IAEA - the world’s nuclear energy inspectorate - for Iran to suspend enrichment activities until the international community was confident its nuclear programme waspeaceful.

“I am seriously concerned at the unilateral decision by Iran to resume suspended nuclear research and development activities,” he said.

The latest move came as Iran has been taking a more confrontational line with the West. Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has angered Europe and the US in recent months with anti-Israel remarks, first calling for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map” and then calling the Nazi Holocaust a “myth”.

The US accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge denied by Iran, which contends its programme aims only to produce energy. France, Germany and Britain have been leading long-troubled negotiations with Iran aimed at ensuring its program is peaceful.

The seals were removed on Monday from equipment at the nuclear plant at Natanz, the centre of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme.

However, Iran stressed it was not resuming enrichment, a key process that can produce either material for a nuclear weapon or fuel for a reactor.

“What we resume is merely in the field of research, not more than that,” the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, Mohammad Saeedi, said.

But the IAEA statement said uranium hexafluoride - a gaseous form of uranium - will “be fed into cascades” of centrifuges as part of Iran’s activities.

Uranium hexafluoride gas is spun in centrifuges to separate out fissile isotopes in the process of enrichment that can produce low-level nuclear fuel or weapons-grade material.

Iranian nuclear workers removed the seals in the presence of IAEA inspectors, then researchers resumed their work, he said.

In Vienna, the chief US representative to the IAEA, Gregory L Schulte, said that by cutting the seals, Iran had shown “its disdain for international concerns and its rejection of international diplomacy”.