From WashingtonPost.Com on July 19, 2003:
Enriched Uranium Traces Found in Iran
U.N. nuclear inspectors have detected traces of enriched uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility south of Tehran, a finding that intensified concerns that Iran is secretly pursuing technologies that could produce nuclear weapons, Western diplomatic sources and weapons experts said yesterday.
The enriched uranium was discovered in environmental samples taken at a nuclear complex near the town of Natanz, where the Iranian government is constructing a massive uranium processing plant that could someday produce fuel for commercial power plants -- or, potentially, for weapons.
Iran has denied producing enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons. The discovery of such material in Iran, if confirmed, would suggest at minimum a serious breach by Iran of its agreements under the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Well, at least this time the UN is involved and has evidence... to bad it may mean more killing...
From WashingtonPost.Com:
Enriched Uranium Traces Found in Iran
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 19, 2003; Page A15
U.N. nuclear inspectors have detected traces of enriched uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility south of Tehran, a finding that intensified concerns that Iran is secretly pursuing technologies that could produce nuclear weapons, Western diplomatic sources and weapons experts said yesterday.
The enriched uranium was discovered in environmental samples taken at a nuclear complex near the town of Natanz, where the Iranian government is constructing a massive uranium processing plant that could someday produce fuel for commercial power plants -- or, potentially, for weapons.
Iran has denied producing enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons. The discovery of such material in Iran, if confirmed, would suggest at minimum a serious breach by Iran of its agreements under the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But Western diplomatic officials familiar with the discovery urged caution, noting that the enriched uranium apparently was found only in a single sample and that other explanations were possible, including inadvertent contamination. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog that carried out the tests in Iran, was preparing to collect additional samples to confirm the result when the news of the discovery broke yesterday.
"At this point we are still in the middle of a complex inspection process in Iran, in which we are investigating a number of unresolved issues," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, who declined to comment on the test results.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, speaking at a meeting of the agency's governing board yesterday, did not mention the enriched uranium, but he again pressed Iran for "substantial progress, without delay," in answering questions about its nuclear program. In the same speech, ElBaradei gave a far darker assessment of North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, calling it "the most immediate and most serious threat."
The uranium discovery comes as Iran faces international pressure to come clean about past and present nuclear activities. An IAEA report in June criticized Iran for failing to disclose a purchase of uranium from China in the early 1990s, and then failing to account for what it did with some of the material.
Iran denies that it seeks nuclear weapons, contending that it is only pursuing its legal right to develop commercial nuclear power. Yesterday, a government spokesman in Tehran told the Reuters news agency that Iran had not yet been informed of the IAEA's discovery.
The Bush administration reacted cautiously to the uranium finding, though officials said the IAEA test results appeared to confirm their fears about Iran's nuclear ambitions. "Iran's clandestine nuclear program represents a serious challenge to regional stability, to the entire international community and to the global nonproliferation regime," said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Weapons experts who have monitored Iran's rapidly growing nuclear program described the development as serious and troubling. Some, noting that the Natanz facility had not yet begun processing uranium, said the enriched material likely was brought in inadvertently from elsewhere -- perhaps on equipment that had been used in a still-secret enrichment facility in another location.
"This would appear to confirm that the Iranian program has advanced to a very serious stage," said Leonard S. Spector, a former top nonproliferation official at the Energy Department and now deputy director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "Just as with North Korea, time is running out for us to find a way to slow this process down."
Even if Iran produces a more innocent explanation for the uranium, weapons experts agreed that the discovery will only increase pressure on the Islamic republic to make its nuclear program fully transparent. "Iran has a responsibility to try to explain this, quickly," said one European-based nuclear weapons expert. "People are going to judge Iran by its level of cooperation in the next few weeks."© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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