Iran gives UN paper diplomats call atom bomb outline

Mark Heinrich and Francois Murphy, Reuters:

Iran has told the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it received a black-market document which diplomats said on Friday contained partial instructions for making the core of an atomic bomb. READ MORE

But a senior official close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, some diplomats and a U.S. nuclear expert urged caution over the disclosure in the latest IAEA report on Iran's nuclear project, saying further investigation was needed.

"Iran's full transparency is indispensable and overdue," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in his confidential report to the agency's board of governors, due to meet on Nov. 24 to consider again whether to send Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.

The report, obtained by Reuters, said the IAEA was given documents including one "on the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium into hemispherical forms". One European diplomat described it as a "cookbook" for the enriched uranium core of a nuclear weapon.

But the senior official close to the U.N. nuclear agency said: "We are not taking a position as to what it (document) is. We are still in the assessment stage."

Tehran told the IAEA the document had come to it unsolicited from people linked to the black market set up by disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan -- a point officials close to IAEA said warranted further investigation.

A diplomat close to the IAEA called the document "damaging" as it dealt with an important aspect of making an atomic weapon.

"But this is not the blueprint the Libyans had," he said, referring to a Chinese bomb design given to Tripoli before it renounced its weapons-of-mass destruction programme in 2003.

A former U.N. weapons inspector, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, said the document fell far short of a building manual for a bomb core.

"Iran has gone from saying it got nothing on this subject to (saying it got) a little bit," Albright said. "But the question remains: did Iran get more than it admitted to?"

"This (document) opens new concerns about weaponisation that Iran has failed to address," the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, said in a statement.

"This has to have a weapons use ... The only question is 'Did they go looking for this'? The Iranians say they didn't," said another Western diplomat.

CONCEALED NUCLEAR PROGRAMME

Iran says it wants to use nuclear power only to generate electricity and has the legal right to do so. But it hid a nuclear development programme from the IAEA for 18 years until 2003, raising Western doubts about its intentions.

Concern rose further when the Islamic republic's president said last month Israel should be "wiped off the map".

ElBaradei also confirmed Tehran had begun processing a new supply of uranium --- 150 drums -- on Wednesday despite Western pressure to halt sensitive atomic work. Iran acknowledged this on Friday but did not say when work had begun.

"We consider that this is a decision which does not go in the right direction," a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

While Iran had been "more forthcoming" in giving access to documents and information in some areas, the IAEA report said, questions on the nature of its nuclear plans persisted.

ElBaradei's report asked Iran to give information on dual-use equipment procurement and allow visits to locations linked to sites such as Lavizan, which Washington says was used for secret nuclear work but was bulldozed before IAEA inspectors could go there.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, quoted by the semi-official ISNA students news agency, said earlier Tehran could not accept the IAEA demand for more access "especially since Lavizan-Shian is a military complex".

His deputy, Javad Vaeedi, said the report showed little change in the IAEA's stance, but "was based on technical and legal considerations which will allow Iran to continue its cooperation with the IAEA".

He said he hoped that at the next IAEA meeting "they will not adopt a political approach to Iran's case as they have done in the past".

Iran took a full-page ad in Friday's New York Times defending its nuclear activities and accusing the United States and its European allies of creating an unnecessary crisis. It contained a detailed rebuttal of all charges and said it resumed uranium conversion because Britain, France and Germany, under U.S. pressure, violated a 2004 agreement.

France, Britain and Germany, who led now-stalled European Union negotiations with Iran, met U.S., Chinese and Russian officials in London on Friday to discuss whether to haul Iran before the Security Council for possible sanctions.

The London talks were also due to discuss a Russian idea, tentatively approved by the EU trio and Washington, meant to break the stalemate with Iran by letting it continue some nuclear fuel output but shift uranium enrichment to Russia. (Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in London, Parisa Hafezi in Tehran, Francois Murphy in Vienna and Louis Charbonneau in Berlin)

My guess is that the Iranian regime feared that Western intelligence had learned that they had received the information and didn't want it to come out at the IAEA meeting next week. More surpises may be coming this week.