Iran: U.S. Seeks Nuke Scapegoats

Iran's chief delegate to the U.N atomic agency said Wednesday that U.S. failures in Iraq are prompting Washington to seek revenge against his country by persisting with accusations about its nuclear program.

Also Wednesday, the 35-nation board of governors meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution praising Libya for fully meeting its pledge to scrap its nuclear weapons program, clearing the stage to focus on what to do about Iran.

Libya also signed an agreement opening up its nuclear activities to pervasive IAEA perusal, a step that both agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and Libyan Science Minister Matouq Mohamed Matouq said reflected Tripoli's commitment to scrap its weapons of mass destruction.

That left the focus on Iran, and a draft resolution trying to meld U.S. demands for tough language and European wishes to praise Tehran for the substantial — but not full — openness it has shown.

Iranian delegate Pirouz Hosseini reiterated that Iran's nuclear programs are purely peaceful, despite American assertions to the contrary.

"We have never been involved in any nuclear weapons program … and the Americans don't want to accept the fact," he told reporters. "The Americans have failed in Iraq, and it seems that it will be very difficult for them to accept a second failure."

The U.N. nuclear watchdog appeared to have moved closer to agreement on Iran Tuesday after the United States and major European powers agreed to praise Tehran's increased openness about its nuclear programs but criticize it for continuing to hide some suspicious activities.

Hosseini criticized the draft, saying the Americans had put "too much pressure" on the Europeans to toughen its language. Additional complications loomed with Iran's announcement Wednesday that it would resume uranium enrichment once its problems with the IAEA are resolved.

"It's our legitimate right to enrich uranium," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Wednesday after a Cabinet meeting in Tehran.

Iran also acknowledged that some centrifuges it produced for enrichment were built by its military industries but asserted this was normal, with the same sector producing parts for television sets and other nonmilitary applications.

Undeclared Iranian enrichment of uranium was one of the reasons behind an IAEA probe of the country's nuclear program. The United States insists clandestine uranium enrichment programs, along with plutonium processing and other undeclared tests, point to a nuclear weapons agenda.
Kharrazi also warned that Iran could end nuclear cooperation and called on the Europeans to oppose U.S. efforts to come down hard on Tehran at the Vienna meeting.

In the draft, agreed on Tuesday in Vienna, the United States compromised with Britain, France and Germany to tone down criticism of Iran's continued nuclear secrecy and offer some praise of Tehran's record in opening activities to outside perusal.

The United States had wanted the meeting to condemn Iran for not fully living up to pledges to reveal all past and present nuclear activities. But the Europeans wanted to focus on Iranian cooperation with the IAEA that began only after the discovery last year that Tehran had plans to enrich uranium and secretly conducted other tests with possible weapons applications over nearly two decades.

That discovery came after Iran opened its facilities to inspections.

"We recommend the three European countries … resist U.S. pressures if they want the project of cooperation between Iran and them to lead to results," Kharrazi said, alluding to agreement that foresees the three providing technology to the Islamic Republic in exchange for a stop to uranium enrichment.

When the issue first came up before the board last year, the United States pushed to have Tehran dragged before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, arguing that Iran had violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But it has found little board support for that.

"I think we have made no secret of our view that Iran's nuclear activities, its clandestine activities, were in support of a nuclear weapons program," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday. "We think it is clear that Iran has not made any decision, any strategic decision to abandon a nuclear weapons effort."

Boucher said the past year has seen only "grudging, partial Iranian cooperation only when confronted … with compelling evidence of an undeclared program."

"We need to send a strong signal to Tehran that it cannot refuse to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency with impunity," Boucher said.

The draft text, made available to The Associated Press, made no direct mention of the Security Council, but noted "with the most serious concern" that past declarations made by Iran "did not amount to the correct, complete and final picture of Iran's past and present nuclear program."

It criticized Iran for "failing to resolve all questions" about uranium enrichment, saying it "deplores" this lapse.

Still, it praised Iran for signing an agreement throwing open its nuclear programs to full and pervasive IAEA perusal and for signs of Iran's cooperation with agency investigations.

The resolution on Libya noted that for more than a decade, Libya violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in running a weapons program but lauded it for volunteering to have it destroyed under IAEA supervision.

An IAEA report last month accused Tehran of continuing to hide evidence of nuclear experiments and mentioned finds of traces of polonium, a radioactive element that can be used in nuclear weapons. It also expressed concerns with the discovery of a previously undisclosed advanced P-2 uranium centrifuge system.

While praising Tehran for some cooperation, ElBaradei said he was "seriously concerned" about Iran's refusal to declare plans and parts for the P-2 enrichment system, calling it a "setback to Iran's stated policy of transparency."