Tehran threatens to hide nuclear programme

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator today warned the country would halt all co-operation with the UN nuclear watchdog if the Security Council imposed sanctions.

Tehran warned it might go further and hide its nuclear programme if the West took other “harsh measures”.

The statements by Ali Larijani were Iran’s strongest defiance yet of a Friday deadline, set by the Security Council, for Iran to suspend enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or material for warheads.

“Military action against Iran will not end our programme,” Larijani said, speaking at a conference on the energy programme.

“If you take harsh measures, we will hide this programme. If you use the language of force, you should not expect us to act transparently.”

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice immediately shot back, saying Iran’s statements were further isolating it from the international community. “Iranians can threaten, but they are deepening their own isolation,” she said in Athens, where she was meeting with officials.

The United States has not threatened military action and has said it is pursuing diplomatic option., but US President George Bush has said all options, including military options, remain on the table.

Larijani’s comments came a day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boldly predicted the Security Council would not impose sanctions and warned he was thinking about dropping out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Also today, Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said during a meeting with the president of Sudan that Iran was ready to transfer its nuclear technology to neighbouring countries. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said last month that his impoverished, war-torn country was considering trying to create a nuclear programme to generate electrical power.

Such a transfer would be legal as long as it is between signatory-states to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and as long as the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors the treaty was informed of the transfer.

Today, Larijani said flatly that Iran would not abide by the Friday deadline set by the Security Council.

“If you take the first step wrong, the wrong trend will continue. We welcome any logical proposal to resolve the issue. They just need to say why should we suspend,” Larijani said.

The watchdog agency’s chief spokesman, Marc Vidricaire, said the agency would not comment on Iran’s words. Vidricaire said the agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, planned no public statements ahead of director Mohamed ElBaradei’s report to the Security Council and the agency’s board, expected by the weekend.

The United States and European allies are expected to press for binding measures against Iran when the Security Council begins the next round of review of the Iranian case as soon as next week.

Although Rice has recently raised the likelihood of pressing for sanctions, she did not go that far today when taking questions after a meeting with her Greek counterpart, saying only that the Security Council must now issue something more concrete than last month’s “presidential statement,” which gave Iran 30 days to comply.

A US diplomat said the IAEA would find Iran was still failing to comply with demands to suspend uranium enrichment by Friday’s deadline. That would set up a push for a United Nations resolution that could expose Iran to “targeted sanctions”, said Gregory Schulte, ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

China and Russia, which are permanent, veto-wielding members of the council, oppose sanctions and both called for more negotiations.

“We see no alternative to the negotiations process,” Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, was quoted as saying by Russia’s Interfax news agency while in Beijing for a regional anti-terror meeting.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called on all parties “to show flexibility,” and said the international community should not abandon its efforts for a peaceful settlement.

Today’s comments were not the first time Iran has threatened to curb cooperation: Several months ago, Tehran announced it would not honour the UN nuclear watchdog’s so-called “additional protocol,” which gave the IAEA increased and more thorough inspection powers.

But Larijani said this time the country would suspend its co-operation altogether, if sanctions were imposed.

“How are you going to prevent our nuclear activities by imposing sanctions? If UN. Security Council sanctions are to be imposed on Iran, we will definitely suspend our cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Larijani said. “They (the Western countries on the IAEA board) have to understand they cannot resolve this issue through force.”

He also hinted that sanctions or even what he called coercive language from the Security Council would lead Iran to speed up its nuclear activities.

“You can’t set a framework through coercion. If you try to do it by force, our response will be to break such a framework,” he said.

The United States, Britain and France maintain that Iran wants uranium for atomic bombs, which would violate the non-proliferation treaty. Iran denies the charge and says its nuclear programme is for peaceful electricity generation only.

Ahmadinejad appears to be banking on support from China and Russia to dissuade Washington from pressing a sanctions vote.

Suspicions about Iran’s intentions have grown since it was discovered in 2002 that the Tehran regime had for two decades secretly operated large-scale nuclear activities that could be used in weapons making.

The IAEA says it has since found no direct evidence of an arms programme, but it also says the Iranians have not been fully forthcoming.

After repeated attempts to resolve the issue through negotiations, the IAEA reported Iran to the Security Council for non-compliance. The council then gave Iran until Friday to suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran deepened international concerns by announcing on April 11 that it had for the first time enriched uranium with 164 centrifuges. Larijani said Iran’s next step was large-scale enrichment.

Despite that, he said Iran might accept a time schedule to move toward large-scale enrichment, if such a schedule were developed through negotiations and without threats.