Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Agencie France Presse:

(Vienna) - Iran came under heavy fire from western countries here Wednesday for failing to answer allegations that it had been trying to build a nuclear bomb until a few years ago.

The United States charged that Tehran was deliberately stalling the International Atomic Energy Agency’s long-running investigation so that it could press ahead with uranium enrichment and ultimately achieve its goal of developing the bomb.

“Iran continues this work apace while it stalls the IAEA with non-answers and obfuscation,” US envoy Gregory Schulte told the agency’s 35-member board during a three-hour debate on Iran.

“Every passing day leads Iran closer to mastering the technology it needs to build a weapon.”

Schulte complained that “despite several months of intense discussions between the IAEA and Iran, which follow years of interaction on weaponisation concerns, Iran has yet to provide any real answers to the IAEA’s questions.”

Indeed, “Iran has instead chosen to deride the IAEA’s questions as ‘baseless allegations’, a charge that the Secretariat and this board cannot accept.”

European countries similarly pressed Tehran to “supply all the necessary information, as well as the access to people, documents and sites requested by the IAEA,” said French ambassador Francois-Xavier Deniau.

“That is the only way for the agency to determine the true nature of the Iranian nuclear programme.”

The Slovenian representative to the IAEA, Bojan Bertoncelj, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, expressed “serious concern” that after a five-year probe, the IAEA was no closer to determining the full nature of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The debate on Iran began on Wednesday afternoon and was scheduled to continue on Thursday, during which Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh was also expected to address the assembly.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has accused Iran of withholding key information that could shed light on the so-called alleged studies including research, engineering work and testing with a possibly military dimension.

The allegations have been backed up by intelligence from 10 different countries. But Iran has simply dismissed the intelligence as “fake” and “fabricated”.

“A simple rejection by Iran of this information as not authentic, forged or fabricated is neither credible nor acceptable, given the quality and quantity of the documents,” Bertoncelj said.

In addition to Iran, another equally contentious issue has also been looming large, allegations that Syria had built a clandestine nuclear reactor until it was bombed by Israeli airplanes last September.

IAEA chief ElBaradei announced on Monday that a team of UN inspectors will travel to Syria June 22-24.

US ambassador Schulte said it was “imperative that Syria fully cooperate with the IAEA and in no way hinder the investigation either by further delaying an inspection or by refusing the IAEA unfettered access to any site requested by the IAEA.”

A diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Syria had informed other Arab League countries on the sidelines of the IAEA meeting that Damascus had agreed to let the experts inspect the bombed building itself in Al-Kabir — a remote site in the Syrian desert.

But no other sites had been specified, the diplomat said, despite US media reports claiming the IAEA was also keen to visit two or three other suspect locations.

In April, Washington turned over intelligence alleging the building was an undeclared nuclear reactor, close to completion, but not yet supplied with the necessary nuclear material.

Damascus has dismissed the accusations as “ridiculous.”

However, it wiped the destroyed site clean of rubble late last year and erected a new building where the destroyed one had stood, making any possible investigation by the IAEA more difficult.

In comments to newspapers in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad again strongly denied the allegations.

“If anyone had a secret dossier on nuclear facilities in Syria with a Korean role, as they claim, then why did they wait for seven months before destroying a normal military facility by the Israeli raid?” al-Assad said in comments reported by the Gulf News.