Russia Pressures Iran On Nukes

Moscow has warned Tehran it will not deliver fuel to a nearly completed Russian-built nuclear reactor unless Tehran lifts the veil of secrecy on suspicious past atomic activities, a European diplomat said Tuesday.

Separately, a U.S. official said Russia is not meeting other commitments that would allow the Iranians to activate the Bushehr nuclear reactor and suggested the delays were an attempt to pressure Tehran into showing more compliance with U.N. Security Council demands. Both men demanded anonymity in exchange for speaking to the AP because their information was confidential.

The increased Russian pressure comes at a time Iran already appears to be ready to compromise on a key international request — that it fully explain past activities that heightened suspicions it might be looking to develop a nuclear arms program.

Those fears led to Security Council demands that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program — and to U.N. sanctions over Tehran's refusal to mothball the program, which can be used both to generate power and to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

In Algeria, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that his country will continue pursuing nuclear energy and will refuse to talk with any countries that do not recognize Tehran's right to civilian nuclear power.

But Tehran last month told the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. nuclear watchdog that is investigating Iran — that it would answer questions about past experiments and activities that could be linked to a weapons program. That — as well as a slowdown in enrichment activities and a decision to lift a ban on IAEA inspections of a reactor that will produce plutonium once it is completed — appeared aimed at deflecting U.S.-led moves to implement a third set of sanctions.

Last month, IAEA inspectors visited the reactor, near the city of Arak. A second European diplomat told the AP that the Iran had recently began providing valuable information on "four of 10 questions" that the agency wanted answered.

IAEA officials declined comment. But concerns detailed by past IAEA reports have included suspicions that Tehran has secretly developed elements of a more sophisticated enrichment program than the one it has made public; that it might not have accounted for all the plutonium it processed in past experiments and that its military might have been involved in enrichment, a program that Tehran insists is strictly civilian-run. Revelations that Tehran possesses diagrams showing how to form uranium metal into the shape of warheads have heightened concerns.

Russia has played a complicated role in attempts to pressure Tehran to comply with international demands.

It and China have blunted attempts by the U.S., Britain and France — the three other permanent Security Council members — to impose harsh U.N. sanctions and have hobbled efforts to move forward on new penalties this summer in the face of continued Iranian refusal to freeze its enrichment activities.

With Iran showing signs of that it is ready to shed light on some of its past unexplained activities, the U.S.-led push for new, more rigorous sanctions has turned into a "steep climb that has become steeper," the U.S. official said, describing Tehran's apparent willingness to end years of stonewalling as a "charm offensive."

Still, Moscow has used Bushehr, built by Russian technicians, as a lever. The first European diplomat said Tuesday that Russian officials told the Iranians about two weeks ago that Russian fuel rods to the Bushehr reactor would be held back as long as unresolved nuclear questions persisted.

That followed what European and U.S. officials described as Russian warning in March that the rods would be withheld as long as the Islamic republic ignored demands that it freeze uranium enrichment.

Russian officials, who at the time denied their country had delivered such a threat, had no immediate comment Tuesday. But Moscow in the past has represented delays in finishing construction — now 95-percent finished but eight years behind schedule — as due to Iranian payment delays under the $1 billion contract, something the U.S. official questioned.

"There are important problems between the U.S. and Russia" over Iran, he said. "But I've seen some stuff that indicates that the delays in providing fuel are more than routine problems over the contract."

Russian officials last week dismissed Iranian claims that the reactor could go on line later this year, saying payment arrears would mean at least another year's delay.