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European Nations Draft Iran Nuclear Resolution
France, Germany and the United Kingdom are preparing a draft international resolution that is expected to both praise Iran’s moves to open its nuclear program to international scrutiny and to seek still more cooperation from Tehran, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, June 3). “The three Europeans’... draft resolution is going to say that there are areas where Iran has been cooperating with the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and areas where they haven’t been cooperating,” a Western diplomat on the agency’s Board of Governors said. “It will also tell them (the Iranians) to cooperate more,” the diplomat added. The board is scheduled to begin a quarterly meeting next week and other diplomats said passage of the European-drafted resolution would likely keep Iran on the IAEA agenda for some time. The agency issued a report last week praising Iran for granting inspectors access to sites. However, the report added that the country has not disclosed all the facts surrounding its imports of nuclear technology that could be used in weapons development. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday that the agency hoped to it could wind up its probe of Iran in the coming months. “I would hope it’s a matter of months that we should be able to bring these issues to closure,” he said, adding that he hoped a second report provided by Tehran to the agency after its first was found to be incomplete would provide a comprehensive set of details on Iran’s nuclear work (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, June 6). Iran insisted yesterday that it had fully explained the discovery of highly enriched uranium at some of its nuclear facilities. “We have nothing more to add. This contamination came on imported equipment, so it is the third party or third country that should cooperate with the IAEA,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. Iran claims such traces came into the country on equipment bought on an international black market involving Pakistan, according to Agence France-Presse. The agency is pressing Pakistan to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites in order to verify Iran’s claim. Iran’s neighbor, which is not a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has given no indications that it would agree to such inspections (see GSN, April 30; Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, June 6).
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