IAEA Handed New Evidence on Iran

Ian Traynor, The Guardian:

Senior Pakistani army officers arrived in Vienna yesterday to help UN nuclear investigators try to solve one of the most troubling questions about Iran's nuclear programme, signalling a potential breakthrough in the two-year investigation.

Bowing to international pressure to assist in the inquiry, Pakistan delivered uranium enrichment components for analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to establish whether traces of weapons-grade uranium found in Iran match that on the Pakistani equipment. READ MORE

If they do, the inspectors will conclude that Iran has been telling the truth in arguing that the weapons-grade uranium was not manufactured in Iran but imported via a Pakistan-based network trading in nuclear technology.

"Both sides are cooperating and the testing and analysis of samples is under way in connection with the IAEA's verification work in Iran," said an agency spokesman of the IAEA-Pakistan investigation.

Traces of the weapons-grade uranium were found by UN inspectors in Iran in 2003, ringing alarms in the west and at IAEA headquarters. But the provenance of the material has never been clarified.

The discovery coincided with revelations that Iran had been secretly trying to enrich uranium for 18 years, obtaining equipment and knowhow from a black market network headed by the disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is under house arrest in Islamabad.

Tehran said the suspect uranium traces must have been due to contamination on the equipment obtained from the Khan network. But Pakistan stalled for more than a year in helping the inspectors to answer the questions.

The Pakistani officers are expected to remain in Austria, guarding the samples while they are analysed at an IAEA laboratory.

The discovery of the weapons-grade traces almost two years ago was one of the most startling discoveries in the Iranian investigation. Inspectors no longer believe that Tehran produced the material. But if the Pakistani and Iranian traces do not match, the finding will throw open the possibility that Iran obtained nuclear equipment from another, as yet unknown, source.

The findings are expected to be made available to diplomats at a meeting of the 35-strong IAEA board in Vienna next month, a session that is also expected to divulge further details of Iran's nuclear programme.