Concluding that it has inadequate international support, the United States has apparently abandoned efforts to have the International Atomic Energy Agency report that Iran is not complying with its nuclear safeguards agreement, diplomats said Friday.

Instead, the United States now plans to submit a less strongly worded resolution on Iran’s nuclear program during an agency Board of Governors’ meeting that began today, according to the Associated Press.  The U.S. resolution would call on Iran to provide unrestricted access to its nuclear program, said a senior diplomat.  The resolution could also set a deadline for Iran to fully comply and warn that if does not, then it will be declared in noncompliance, which could result in the issue being reported to the U.N. Security Council, a second diplomat said (George Jahn, Associated Press/Tuscaloosa News, Sept. 5).

The chances that the IAEA board would approve a resolution that left out Security Council involvement are “better than 50-50,” a Western diplomat said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Sept. 5).

ElBaradei Opens Meeting

In a statement to the board today, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei set the tone in Vienna by saying Tehran must step up cooperation with the agency in the weeks ahead.

The meeting agenda for the two-day talks is varied, but the focus is expected to be squarely on Iran.

ElBaradei called on Tehran, “in the coming weeks, to show proactive and accelerated cooperation and to demonstrate full transparency by providing the agency with a complete and accurate declaration of all its nuclear activities.”  He urged Iran to take specific measures related to points raised in a report on Iran he submitted late last month to the board (see GSN, Sept. 4).

Iran has claimed that highly enriched uranium particles the IAEA found at the country’s Natanz centrifuge facility represented contamination that came from the country providing the equipment in question.  Numerous reports have indicated the provider was Pakistan.

This morning, ElBaradei said Iran should “provide a complete list of all imported equipment and components stated to have been contaminated with high enriched uranium particles, and — importantly — identify the origin and date of receipt of the equipment, including information about where it has been used or stored in Iran.”

He added that Iran should “resolve questions regarding the conclusion of agency experts that process testing of gas centrifuges must have been conducted in order for Iran to develop its enrichment technology to its current extent.”

Earlier this year, IAEA experts deemed centrifuge technology they observed in Iran to be impossible to develop without conducting tests using nuclear material.  Iran has said it introduced no such material into centrifuges before that time.

ElBaradei added that Iran should provide complete information on any uranium conversion experiments it has conducted, should sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement and, in the meantime, grant the agency access to “all sites and locations that the agency deems necessary to visit” (Joe Fiorill, Global Security Newswire, Sept. 8).

Iran, Russia to Discuss Bushehr Spent Fuel Arrangement Later This Month

Meanwhile, Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev has said that Russian and Iranian officials would meet in Vienna later this month to discuss the return of spent nuclear fuel from the Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran to Russia, ITAR-Tass reported today (see GSN, Aug. 6).

The drafting and signing of an agreement on the return of spent fuel from the Bushehr plant, which Russia is currently constructing, “is a purely technical matter,” Rumyantsev said.  Both countries agree that such an agreement is necessary, and the only issue left to resolve is how the spent fuel will be returned, he said.  “We should decide what changes should be made and in what contracts,” Rumyantsev said (Veronika Romanenkova, ITAR-Tass, Sept. 8).

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