From the Los Angeles Times

U.N. nuclear report will likely note Iran cooperation

Iranian officials relinquish a document on the uranium program, but the U.S. says that without full disclosure it will continue to push for harsher sanctions.

By Maggie Farley
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

10:46 AM PST, November 14, 2007

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog report due this week is expected to say that Iran has mostly cooperated with an investigation into its nuclear program's murky past, but key questions remain unanswered, diplomats say.

Another critical report expected later this month by the European Union's nuclear negotiator Javier Solana is likely to confirm that Iran has not suspended enrichment of uranium, in defiance of the Security Council -- opening the door to tougher sanctions.

But without a clear-cut judgment that Iran remains recalcitrant or is unmistakably pursuing a nuclear weapon, the Security Council may find itself in the same position it has been in the last four years: unable to compel Iran with carrots or sticks to suspend its nuclear program until Tehran can prove it is solely for producing energy, not bombs.

"Iran may have walked that tightrope well enough to keep things going," said a Western diplomat in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency is based.

In an effort to show its cooperation ahead of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report, which is expected Thursday, Iran handed over a long-withheld secret blueprint showing how to shape uranium metal into hemispheres for a nuclear warhead, dipIomats said.

IAEA inspectors had discovered the document in 2005, but were only permitted to read it and not take it outside the country. Iran has claimed that it was given to them unsolicited by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, who later secretly peddled nuclear technology to Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya.

Iranian officials said they did not ask for the blueprint and did not try to manufacture a weapon from the plans. Its handover was one of the demands that ElBaradei had put to Iran's government as part of a "plan of work" that requires Iran to answer questions one-by-one about its two decades of clandestine nuclear development. ElBaradei said he hoped to finish the inquiry by the end of the year.

Iran also provided some information about P1 and P2 centrifuges designed to enrich uranium, said Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi after meeting with British parliamentarians in London on Tuesday. But he said the issue was "under study."

The P2 type, suspected to operate with technology provided by Khan, is more sophisticated and can refine uranium two or three times as fast as the P1.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that a cascade of 3,000 centrifuges was operating and that the country's nuclear program was "irreversible." If the cascade is functioning properly, it can enrich enough uranium for a bomb in about a year, scientists say, though U.S. intelligence estimates put Iran between four and seven years away from constructing a complete weapon.

Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, said today that the United States will keep pushing for harsher sanctions, even if the watchdog group reports partial cooperation by Iran.

Britain, France and Germany have been pressing the other two permanent members of the Security Council, China and Russia, to increase targeted penalties on officials and companies involved in the nuclear program unless Iran suspends enrichment.

"Selective cooperation is not good enough," Schulte told reporters in Vienna. "When we read this report and evaluate Iran's cooperation, the standard we will look for is full disclosure and also a full suspension of their proliferation-sensitive activities."