UN nuclear chief says he ‘must alert world’ about Iran

The UN nuclear chief says it is his duty to “alert the world” about suspected work in Iran to develop atomic bombs, as major powers prepared to intensify the pressure on theIslamic state.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Yukiya Amano stressed the need for Iran to engage in serious talks and said he wanted to send a high-level mission to the country to address mounting fears about the nature of its nuclear activities.

An IAEA report last week, which assessed that Iran has been conducting research and experiments to develop a nuclear weapons capability, has stoked tensions in the Middle East and raised a clamour in Western capitals for harsher sanctions against the Islamic state.

“It is clear that Iran has a case to answer,” Amano told a news conference. “We have to alert the world before nuclear proliferation actually takes place.”

He made the statement at a meeting of its 35-nation governing board, where six major powers were set to close ranks on a draft resolution that expresses “deep and increasing concern” about Iran’s activities and calls on it to open up fully to UN inspectors.

The statement called on Iran “to engage seriously and without preconditions in talks,” to address nuclear concerns.

Vienna-based Western diplomats said the powers had agreed compromise language for a draft resolution, to be put to governors for approval today, after Western states and Russia overcame divisions stirred by Amano’s report.

But the resolution will not satisfy those in the West and in Israel, Iran’s arch-enemy, who had hoped Amano’s document would trigger concrete international action to rein in Tehran, such as an IAEA referral of its case to the UN Security Council.

Amano said he had written to the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, earlier this month to suggest the visit, which would air issues raised by the hard-hitting IAEA report. “Throughout the past three years, we have obtained additional information which gives us a fuller picture of Iran’s nuclear programme and increases our concerns about possible military dimensions.

“The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,” he said, in his bluntest public statement on Iran’s contested nuclear programme.

Iran says it is enriching uranium only for nuclear power plants, not arms, dismissing the intelligence information in the IAEA report obtained mainly from Western states as fabricated, and accusing the IAEA of pro-Western bias.

Amano said he hoped a “suitable date” could be agreed soon for his team’s visit to Iran, which permits IAEA inspections of declared nuclear sites but since 2008 has stonewalled an agency investigation into “alleged studies” applicable to atomic bombs.

“I ask Iran to engage substantively with the agency without delay and provide the requested clarifications regarding possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme,” Amano said.