IAEA back as Iran talks tough over nuke plan IAEA back as Iran talks tough over nuke plan
Saturday, April 08, 2006
LONDON, April 8 - According to an AFP report, international inspectors are due to begin another round of routine checks on Iranian nuclear facilities Saturday after a senior cleric vowed the Islamic regime would defend its nuclear program with its "last drop of blood".
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors flew in to Iran on Friday to visit its uranium enrichment facility and other sites, an official of the Islamic republic's atomic energy agency said.
Mohammad Saidi, the Iranian agency's vice president, said the inspectors would start work on Saturday and visit the enrichment facility in Natanz and uranium conversion plant in Isfahan.
"We want our rights and nothing more, and we will resist until our last drop of blood," Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khatami said in a Friday prayer sermon broadcast on state radio.
"They want to create a crisis. The Security Council, which ought to be an instrument of justice, wants to create insecurity and injustice," the ultra-conservative cleric charged.
"They have set a one-month deadline for us to suspend our research on enrichment. They can set a one-month delay, one for a year or whatever they want. We will not renounce our rights."
A non-binding statement approved unanimously by the world body on March 29 gave the Islamic republic 30 days to abandon the sensitive nuclear work, but without issuing a threat of sanctions.
Iran has refused to freeze its nuclear research and developmen, which includes uranium enrichment, that it resumed in January, insisting on nuclear technology for peaceful purposes as its right.
Tehran vehemently denies it has ambitions of building a nuclear bomb and says its nuclear energy program is purely peaceful.
Meanwhile, Khatami said the past week of Iranian military maneuvers in the strategic Persian Gulf, in which missiles were tested, aimed to show that "if the enemies try to attack Islamic Iran, they will receive a severe smacking."
The IAEA visit starting Friday was planned months ago and is not linked to the Security Council statement of late March, Aliasghar Soltanieh, Iran's representative to the IAEA said, quoted by the semi-official news agency Mehr.
"The inspections to be carried out in the coming days are routine inspections within the framework of the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty and not linked to the statement," he said.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei will visit Iran next week, a diplomat with the agency said in Vienna on Friday.
"The IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei will be travelling to Tehran to meet with senior officials for discussions related to outstanding safeguard verification issues and other confidence building measures requested by the IAEA board of governors," the diplomat said.
The diplomat did not say on what day ElBaradei would go to Iran.
"This visit will provide Iran an opportunity ... to come forward with information required by the IAEA to fill in the gaps in the history of Iran's nuclear activities," he said.
"He's not going there to negotiate any settlement. His going there is part of an ongoing verification process and this requires face-to-face contact."
ElBaradei said Thursday he hoped for "cooperation and transparency" from Tehran over its nuclear power standoff.
"There are still outstanding issues in Iran that we need to clarify," he told a Madrid news conference.
"I hope we will get the maximum cooperation and transparency from Iran that will enable us to provide a positive report, but I can only tell you that when our inspectors come back," he said.