El-Baradei stresses nuke inspection deal with Iran

VIENNA—The UN atomic agency’s deal for inspections in Iran is a necessary step in trying to defuse a confrontation that could otherwise lead to war, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Friday.
“On the one hand, I see Iran is moving with its (uranium) enrichment without us doing the robust verification required . . . on the other hand I see wardrums (from those) who are basically saying the solution is to bomb Iran,” ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna. The United States accuses Iran of using a civilian energy programme as a front for a covert nuclear weapons programme. It stresses diplomacy to resolve the crisis but has not ruled out military action.
ElBaradei said the talk of bombing made him “shudder” because the rhetoric was reminiscent of the period before the Iraq war, when he had pleaded for more time to let his International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors verify claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. ElBaradei has been criticized for a timetable the IAEA agreed to in August for Tehran to answer lingering questions about its past nuclear activities, including its possession of documents on how to make the inner core of atom bombs.
The Washington Post on Wednesday said ElBaradei was failing to crack down on Iran for enriching uranium, which can be used to make fuel for nuclear bombs. Two UN Security Council resolutions have called on Tehran to stop enriching uranium. ElBaradei reported August 30 that Iran was slowing down its enrichment work and was still short of having the 3,000 centrifuges running for an industrial level of enrichment. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has since said Iran has this many centrifuges running.
A total of 3,000 centrifuges operating full speed can make enough enriched uranium for an atom bomb in one year. ElBaradei said it was “bonkers” to think he was acting independently of either the Security Council or his 35-nation executive board, which is responsible for policy decisions. ElBaradei said the IAEA’s deal with Iran enabled cooperation that was mandated by the Security Council. Once Iran had offered to answer the IAEA’s questions, “we have to accept yes as an answer. We can not afford to say no,” he argued.
Diplomats have criticized the agreement, saying it would allow Iran to refuse to answer future IAEA questions and to honor the IAEA and Security Council demands for wider inspections under an additional protocol. ElBaradei said the IAEA has made clear “privately and publicly that we will continue and have the right to give any questions in the future. “The Iranians can never get a pass (on their nuclear work) until we decide they get a pass,” he insisted.
Despite “suspicions about Iran’s future intentions,” ElBaradei said the IAEA had not seen “any undeclared for example facilities, enrichment activities or any weaponization of their program nor have we received any information to that effect,” from intelligence agencies. “We haven’t received any smoking gun,” ElBaradei said. He said that while the IAEA was still unable to say whether Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful or military “we do not see based on the evidence we have that this is a clear and present danger that requires that you go beyond diplomacy.” He repeated his call for a “time-out” for talks, during which there would be no new UN sanctions and no expansion by Iran of its enrichment work.
ElBaradei defended the timetable allowing Iran to defuse one issue at a time, pointing out that the first issue — the nature of Iran’s enrichment work — was the most important.—Agencies