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Iran responds on nuclear deal ahead of month-end deadline
By Michael Adler
AFP
VIENNA
Petroleumworld.com 08 23 06
UN nuclear inspectors are in the final stages of preparing a report that will dispel any doubts about Iran's stand on uranium enrichment, which makes nuclear fuel but also atom bomb material.
The United Nations Security Council has given Iran until August 31 to halt enrichment and reprocessing activities, or face possible sanctions.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to issue a report on that date after verifying whether Tehran has complied with the deadline.
But Iran on Tuesday responded to an offer from six world powers of negotiations on trade, technology and security benefits if Iran freezes its strategic nuclear fuel work.
Although Tehran called for "serious talks" it gave no indication it would halt enrichment.
However, there seems little doubt that Iran is pressing ahead with this strategic process.
On Monday, Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation deputy head Mohammad Saeedi said that Iran would "provide Europe with an exceptional chance for an understanding and a return to the negotiating table," but insisted an enrichment freeze was "no longer possible".
A senior European diplomat, who had seen the confidential Iranian response to the package from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, said Tuesday that Iran had "not said 'no' to the offer but did say 'no' to suspending enrichment."
Iran is also showing intransigeance over cooperation with IAEA inspectors.
Tehran has blocked inspectors from visiting a key underground site, a reinforced complex designed to withstand bombing attacks, at the Natanz enrichment facility, diplomats told AFP.
It has also refused visas for several inspectors and is granting mainly short-term, one-entry visas instead of longer-term, multiple-entry visas.
And Iran has formally complained about a UN atomic inspector, after refusing to admit two other inspectors, diplomats said.
Meanwhile, Iran is still not providing information which the IAEA has sought over at least the past year on "outstanding issues," such as its work on improving centrifuges, the machines which enrich uranium, and possibly military and nuclear-related activities.
The problems are not yet "deemed to be systematic and obstructionist," said a diplomat close to the IAEA, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
If they were, the diplomat said, the IAEA board of governors would be required to act on them as violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But the diplomat said there is "frustration there are so many outstanding issues."
The United States said Tuesday that it would study Iran's response to the international incentives offer carefully but added that it was ready to move ahead quickly in seeking UN enforcement action if Tehran did not freeze enrichment.
"I think this is essentially a 'no' even though Iran will say that it found some positive elements in the incentive package," non-proliferation analyst Mark Fitzpatrick told AFP from the London IISS think tank.
"There is no basis for considering the package without an Iranian suspension of its enrichment activity, so this issue will go to the Security Council as soon as the IAEA reports on August 31 that Iran has not in fact suspended enrichment activity," Fitzpatrick said.
Divisions are emerging among world powers over how to handle the crisis, with the United States baying for sanctions while Russia, China and even countries like Japan, which depends on Iranian oil, urging caution.
Iran has said it is ready for sanctions, which will almost certainly be, at first, limited measures, such as banning the travel of Iranian nuclear scientists and officials involved in the atomic program.
Iran, one of the world's top oil producers, insists its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity and that it has the right to enrich uranium as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
AFP 23 1111 GMT 08 06
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