Iran denied help from UN nuclear watchdog over reactor

THE UN nuclear agency’s 35-nation board yesterday denied Iran technical help in building a plutonium-producing reactor, but left room for Tehran to resubmit its request.

Iranian officials said construction would continue.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board made its decision, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei chided Iran for not fully cooperating with agency experts who are working to ensure that its nuclear programme is not being used to make weapons.

“We have reached a period of standstill,” he said.

But he said Iran had recently compromised on two issues — agreeing to provide access to the operating records of its pilot uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and allowing inspectors to take more samples from a facility that had yielded suspicious traces of enriched uranium

Mr ElBaradei described the concessions as important, saying it would allow the agency to gain further understanding of how successful Iran’s enrichment efforts were and possibly determined the origin of the uranium traces.

Expressing hope that Iran’s moves were the “beginning of a series of cooperative measures,” he said full cooperation — and Iran’s compliance with a Security Council demand to stop uranium enrichment — would remove the threat of UN sanctions.

Uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing can both produce fissile material for nuclear warheads.

While Iran says it only wants to generate energy and needs the plutonium-producing Arak plant to make nuclear isotopes for medical use, there is concern because both programmes could be used to make weapons.