Russian experts leaving Iranian nuclear reactor construction site

Russia is pulling out its experts from the Iranian nuclear reactor site they were helping build, US and European officials said yesterday.

The move reflected a growing rift between Iran and Russia that could lead to harsher UN sanctions on the Islamic republic for its refusal to stop uranium enrichment.

The representatives — a European diplomat and a US official — said a large number of Russian technicians, engineers and other specialists have returned to Moscow in the past week, at about the same time senior Russian and Iranian officials tried unsuccessfully to resolve financial differences over the Bushehr nuclear reactor.

“A good number of them have left recently,” said the US official, of the approximately 2,000 Russian workers on the site of the nearly completed reactor outside the southern city of Bushehr. The European diplomat, accredited to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said a large number had left as recently as last week.

Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Rosatom, Russia’s Federal Nuclear Power Agency, confirmed the number of Russian workers at the Bushehr plant had dwindled because of what he said were Iranian payment delays.

In a commentary, Iranian state television criticised Russia for what it described as a policy of procrastination in constructing Bushehr.

The nuclear reactor outside the southern city of Bushehr is not part of Iran’s dispute with the UN Security Council. It has no potential military use.

The Russian departures are formally linked to a financial dispute with Iran but have a strong political component, linked to international efforts to persuade the Islamic republic to freeze activities linked to uranium enrichment.

Although the reactor is 95% completed, Russia announced this month that further work would be delayed because Iran had failed to make monthly payments since January.