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3/24/15, "Iran isn’t providing needed access or information, nuclear watchdog says," Washington Post, Steven Mufson
"The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has
failed to provide the information or access needed to allay the
agency’s concerns about the weapons potential of the country’s nuclear
program.
With the deadline nearing for international talks on
constraining Iran’s nuclear program, Yukiya Amano, director general of
the IAEA, said in an interview that Iran has replied to just one of a
dozen queries about “possible military dimensions” of past nuclear
activities.
Amano said that Iran has provided only “very limited”
information about two other issues, while the rest have not been
addressed at all.
“Recently, the progress is very limited,” he said.
The
IAEA is the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, and its inspections are
considered a key safeguard against countries using civilian nuclear
energy technology to produce weapons. Failure by Iran to comply with
IAEA demands would undermine the country’s efforts to win the lifting of
U.N. sanctions.
Amano said that the six global powers negotiating with Iran should
insist that the country implement the additional protocol that would
allow IAEA inspectors to go anywhere at any time to examine sites
suspected of harboring secret nuclear weapons development.
He
said that he spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on
Feb. 7 in Munich but noted that Iran has not yet provided the
information the agency needs.
Amano met early Tuesday with U.S.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry. He was scheduled to meet later with
President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice.
That
additional protocol, Amano said, will be “very much needed. It will give
us more powerful tools to look at activities not declared to us.” He
said that in the past the agency has had two to four inspectors in Iran,
but that recently there have been as many as 10.
Iran signed the
protocol in December 2003 and initially implemented it, Amano said, but
the country ended its compliance in 2006.
Amano said that near
the top of his list of unanswered questions about possible military
dimensions of Iranian nuclear activities was the Parchin military
complex. He said that the IAEA has information that Iran conducted
experiments in a high-explosive chamber there.
“We
would like to have access, and we would like to clarify,” Amano said. He
said Iran had twice given IAEA inspectors access to the base, but he
added that Parchin “is a huge area with many buildings.” Now, he said,
the IAEA thinks it has identified “the right place to visit,” but its
access has been blocked.
After the agency requested admittance to
that area in late 2011, it observed by satellite extensive landscaping,
demolition and new construction there.
Amano
said that looking at sites with military nuclear potential was “like a
jigsaw puzzle.” He said, “As we have a better understanding of one
issue, we have better understanding of another issue.”
Amano said
that the IAEA’s failure to detect Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in the
1980s had forced the agency to demand unfettered access to countries
suspected of building weapons in secret.
In openly declared
sites, he said, the agency places cameras and seals in strategic places
so that it can “detect abnormalities in a timely manner,” ranging from a
day to a week.
Amano’s comments come after a Feb. 19 report the
agency sent to member governments that complained about Iran’s lack of
responsiveness. The report said: “The Agency remains concerned about the
possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities
involving military related organizations, including activities related
to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”
Although
Iran has declared to the IAEA 18 nuclear facilities and nine other
locations where nuclear material is used, the agency said in its report
that it “is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the
absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and
therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful
activities.”" via Drudge
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