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Iran Nuclear Dispute Takes Center Stage By Greg Webb and Jim Wurst UNITED NATIONS — Iran insisted today that it would continue to develop its uranium enrichment technology, holding a steady position in the face of a growing crisis (see GSN, May 2). The Iranian controversy has quickly emerged as the top problem facing the nations gathered here to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Officials from Tehran began holding high-level, back-room talks yesterday with key nations to push its position that the world should embrace its uranium enrichment program. “Iran, for its part, is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes,” Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi told the treaty conference this morning. “It is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of nonproliferation.” Last week, top Iranian officials began to ramp up tensions over the issue by reportedly vowing to resume some of the uranium enrichment activity that Tehran has suspended while it holds talks with the European Union. In particular, media reports have indicated that Iran is considering restarting its uranium conversion efforts, a process that changes uranium into a form that can be enriched in centrifuges (see related GSN story, today). Yesterday, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters here that such a move would lead to end to the EU talks. “We are ready to continue these talks,” he said, “based on the reality on the ground that there are no activities which are against the Paris agreement,” the deal struck last November in which Iran promised to suspend all uranium enrichment activities and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify the halt. The EU position, Fischer said, was that “there will be permanent cessation of however you will name it, the enrichment process, and there will be no closing of the fuel cycle” in Iran. Kharazi’s speech today clearly rejected that goal. “No one should be under the illusion,” he said, that Iran would accept measures that “theoretically or practically amount to cessation or even long-term suspension of legal activit[ies] which have been and will be carried out under the fullest and most intrusive IAEA supervision.” U.S. Pushes HardestIn its address to the conference yesterday, the United States maintained its hard-line strategy of being to only nation to publicly reject Iran’s assertion that its nuclear activities are peaceful. “For almost two decades Iran has conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons program,” said Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker. “Iran persists in not cooperating fully,” he said. “Iran has made clear its determination to retain the nuclear infrastructure it secretly built in violation of its NPT safeguards obligations, and is continuing to develop its nuclear capacities around the margins of the suspension it agreed to last November, for example, by continuing construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak.” Saying the United States supports the efforts of European nations to negotiate a settlement to the dispute, Rademaker added that any resolution “must include permanent cessation of Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing efforts, as well as dismantlement of equipment and facilities related to such activity.” While many nations have urged the United States and other nuclear-armed states to accelerate moves required by the treaty toward disarmament, Rademaker focused his remarks on noncompliance issues raised by the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. “Today, the treaty is facing the most serious challenge in its history due to instances of noncompliance.” He added, “Some [countries] continue to use the pretext of a peaceful nuclear program to pursue the goal of developing nuclear weapons. We must confront this challenge in order to ensure that the treaty remains relevant.” Rademaker repeated proposals made by the United States last year on closing loopholes in the nuclear fuel cycle regime. These steps include universal adherence to the International Atomic Energy Agency Additional Protocol; “creating a special safeguards committee of the IAEA Board of Governors;” and “restricting the export of sensitive technologies.” A “robust” safeguard system “builds confidence that peaceful nuclear development is not being abused. Safeguards are therefore essential to facilitating peaceful nuclear programs,” Rademaker said. “An effective, transparent export control regime” would build confidence that the technology “will not be diverted to illegal weapons purposes.” While these initiatives “call for action outside the formal framework of the NPT, they are grounded on the norms and principles of nuclear nonproliferation laid down by the treaty. If adopted, they will each answer directly real threats to the vitality of the treaty,” Rademaker said. He also argued that the right in the treaty to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes is not unequivocal. While the treaty does offer the benefits of nuclear technology, he said it is conditional on meeting other requirements in the pact, specifically commitments not to participate in the transfers of nuclear weapons or weapons technology to other countries. Rademaker also said the United States “remains fully committed to fulfilling our obligations under Article 6,” which requires the nuclear powers to move toward eventual complete nuclear disarmament “We are proud to have played a leading role in reducing nuclear arsenals,” he said. The Moscow Treaty of 2002 will reduce strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200, and the numbers of nonstrategic warheads have dropped by 90 percent since the end of the Cold War, he said. “We have also reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our deterrence strategy and are cutting our nuclear stockpile almost in half, to the lowest level in decades.” The non-nuclear states addressing the conference also said noncompliance was a concern but were not as ready as the United States to place so much of the blame on Iran, nor were they willing to accept U.S. disarmament steps as significant progress. Germany’s Fischer said in his speech yesterday, “Our efforts must be directed equally towards the two central aims of this treaty,” preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting nuclear disarmament. “We can only successfully tackle this challenge if everyone contributes: nuclear-weapon states are called upon to live up to their commitments to further reduce their arsenals. Non-nuclear-weapon states must exercise their right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in a way that does not give rise to concern about misuse and military nuclearization,” he said. “The breaches that have been identified with regard to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA have shaken our confidence in the aims of its nuclear program,” Fischer said. Therefore, France, Germany and United Kingdom “are conducting intensive negotiations with Iran in order to dispel the international community’s serious concerns.” Those negotiations have “already borne fruit” in that Iran has “made a commitment to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities for the duration of the negotiations,” he said. A long-term agreement must “ensure that Iran’s nuclear program can only be used for peaceful purposes. This is the core issue, and we must come to a satisfactory mutual agreement on this matter,” Fischer added. “We must also critically assess the current situation with regard to nuclear disarmament,” Fischer said. “We should re-examine the existing arsenals of strategic and sub-strategic nuclear weapons and energetically work to further reduce them. …What we need now is new impetus for nuclear disarmament — not the least to effectively counter the danger of an erosion of the Nonproliferation Treaty.” Other nationsNew Zealand’s Disarmament Minister Marian Hobbs said the New Agenda Coalition — an ad hoc grouping of seven non-nuclear allies of the United States – “sees the pursuit of nuclear disarmament as a fundamental tool in addressing the international community’s deep concern about proliferation. Nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation are mutually reinforcing processes.” The coalition — Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden — has become something of a negotiating counterpart to the nuclear powers in the NPT review conferences, working to extract as many disarmament commitments as possible from the five nations. The New Agenda and other states did not dismiss disarmament steps taken by the nuclear powers, such as the Moscow Treaty, but said the initiatives fell short of what was agreed to at the 1995 and 2000 review conferences. “We are willing to give credit where credit is due,” said Hobbs, acknowledging that “collective efforts are being made by the nuclear weapon states and others to secure the vast amounts of nuclear material that remain worldwide.” On the other hand, she said, “The majority of weapons reductions are not irreversible, transparent or verifiable, and the role of nuclear weapons in security policies has not been diminished.” The New Agenda also wants to address “the troubling development that some nuclear weapon states are researching or even planning to develop new or significantly modify existing nuclear weapons. These actions have the potential to create the conditions for a new nuclear arms race and would be contrary to the treaty,” Hobbs said. Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern of Ireland, said, “We are concerned when it appears that nuclear weapons are still reaffirmed as central to strategic concepts for the foreseeable future. … Such plans do nothing to inspire confidence.” The consensus agreement from the 2000 review conference included what has become known as the 13 practical steps — specific actions the nuclear powers would take as part of their commitment to elimination their nuclear weapons. Rademaker did not refer to the steps in his speech, but U.S. officials on other occasions have dismissed many of the steps as outdated. Ahern said the 13 steps — including ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and reducing the number of nonstrategic weapons — “retain a particular legitimacy. It is a matter of regret and deep disappointment that some parties now seem to cal this agreement into question.” Fischer said Germany also continued to support the 13 steps. “Nuclear weapon states must also reaffirm their unequivocal undertaking to nuclear disarmament, and they must back this up with confidence-building steps,” he said. Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar of Malaysia, speaking on behalf of the nonaligned parties to the treaty, said, “The stress is on proliferation, rather than disarmament in good faith. This lack of balance in the implementation of the NPT threatens to unravel the NPT regime.”
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