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Iran Offers Full Nuclear Transparency
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said today that Tehran is committed to total nuclear transparency and will continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (see GSN, Nov. 13). “We are strongly determined on complete transparency,” Kharazi said after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Tokyo. “We have cooperated even more than the IAEA expected,” he added. The IAEA recently completed a report detailing a history of extensive and secret Iranian nuclear activities, but the agency concluded that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons. The United States has dismissed the IAEA conclusion (Reuters, Nov. 14). Iran and Pakistan also today denied reports that Iranian officials had told the IAEA that Pakistan had secretly assisted Iran in its nuclear development. “Both sides dismiss as totally baseless a Western media report alleging that Iran had admitted to the IAEA that Pakistan had given Iran assistance for its nuclear program,” according to a statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry. “These unsubstantiated reports are published periodically in some sections of the Western media, and they reflect their longstanding anti-Muslim bias,” the statement added (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 14). A U.S. State Department spokesman yesterday said that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but added that Washington has not decided if it will push the issue toward the U.N. Security Council. “We have received the IAEA report. We are looking at it. We are studying it. We have not come to a conclusion about what actions to take on the basis of that report,” said spokesman Adam Ereli. He said that U.S. officials will work to ensure that the Nov. 20 IAEA Board of Governors meeting produces an “appropriate and effective” response to Iran’s recently revealed nuclear development (State Department transcript, Nov. 13). If the board forwards the matter to the Security Council, the issue could “escalate into an international crisis,” according to Iran’s IAEA representative Ali Akbar Salehi. Iran would not withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but “there are many things Iran can do. We have a lot of leverage,” Salehi said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 14).
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