Iran's leader cites atomic progress

Iran's leader cites atomic progress
By William J. Broad and Nazila Fathi
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune and The New York Times News Service
Published November 15, 2006

NEW YORK -- Iran's president declared Tuesday that his country's nuclear program is nearing an important milestone, even as international atomic inspectors reported that they had found unexplained traces of plutonium and that Tehran continued to be so uncooperative in answering questions that they had been unable to confirm earlier claims of progress.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Iran hoped to soon master the nuclear fuel cycle came as world powers, suspicious that Iran is seeking the means to make nuclear weapons, are trying to agree on sanctions. Iran says it wants only to fuel reactors and generate electricity.

"I hope we can have our celebration of Iran's full nuclearization this year," Ahmadinejad said during a news conference in Tehran, apparently referring to a program that could do everything from extracting uranium ore from the ground to enriching it into reactor fuel. Iran's calendar ends in March.

In its latest report on the Iranian nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, said Tehran was moving ahead with its efforts to purify uranium while refusing to answer basic questions about the program.

For instance, the report said Iran had failed to provide full access to records needed to confirm its claims in June of having enriched uranium to 5 percent, which is suitable for reactors.

The report also said inspectors had made no progress in resolving the origin of previously discovered traces of highly enriched uranium, which can fuel atomic bombs. In September, the agency disclosed the discovery of the particles on a container from a waste storage site at Karaj, not far from Tehran, but withheld judgment about where the material came from and whether it could be linked to a secret nuclear weapons program.

Finally, the report said inspectors had recently found traces of another unexplained particle--plutonium--on samples from containers at Karaj and a response from Tehran about its origin was being assessed. Plutonium, like uranium, can fuel nuclear weapons.

"Unless Iran addresses the long outstanding verification issues," the report concluded, the atomic agency "will remain unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities."

The report was sent to the 35 countries on the atomic agency's decision-making board before its regularly scheduled quarterly session in Vienna on Nov. 23 and 24. It was distributed on a confidential basis Tuesday but was quickly made available to reporters.

In Tehran, Ahmadinejad once again defied international demands to suspend uranium enrichment and reiterated Iran's ultimate enrichment goal: to expand its program to an industrial level with 60,000 centrifuges.

In a news conference with Iranian journalists, he also brushed off suggestions by other senior authorities that Iran might suspend the reactor-fuel program, saying there is no way Iran would turn back.

Ahmadinejad said Iran has prepared itself to confront possible sanctions. "Nothing has been passed against Iran yet, but we are ready for any condition," he said. "They will do their best, and so will we. In the end, the winner is whoever stands more firmly."

He said Iran was willing to hold talks with the United States if Washington changes its attitude. "We want to have good relations with all countries, but they have a certain attitude and think they own the world," he said. "Our people cannot tolerate that."

So far, Iran has built two cascades of 164 centrifuges for uranium enrichment--the process of purification used to make nuclear reactor fuel and, at great purity, the core of a nuclear weapon. It has announced that it wants to have 3,000 centrifuges operating by March 2007.

Nuclear experts have estimated that it could take a plant of 3,000 centrifuges as little as nine months to make 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium--enough for anywhere from one to five small nuclear weapons, depending on the skill of the bombmakers.

Intelligence analysts say Iran could be anywhere from three to nine years away from having the ability to build an atom bomb.