EU pushes Iran to join world atomic safety pact

VIENNA (Reuters) - The European Union has called on Iran to join an international nuclear safety convention that could increase knowledge about its disputed atomic energy plans.

In an address to a closed safety review meeting of dozens of nations with nuclear programs, the EU urged Tehran to submit its Bushehr nuclear complex, now close to being completed by Russian contractors, to the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS).

"The EU ... encourages other member states, particularly those having plans to start a nuclear program, to become a contracting party to the CNS before they start building nuclear facilities," said the EU text, obtained by Reuters.

"This is even more important for states about to commission a nuclear power plant. Iran is the only country building a nuclear power plant that is not a contracting party to the CNS. The EU calls on Iran to accede to the convention."

Iranian officials could not be reached for comment.

Russia has already delivered nuclear fuel under a $1 billion contract to build Iran's first nuclear power station, on its Gulf coast. A senior Iranian nuclear official said last week the plant is likely to be come on line in the last quarter of 2008.

Russia and the United States say the plant means Iran does not need to enrich uranium itself, as it has begun doing at the underground Natanz centrifuge complex, raising suspicion it is seeking nuclear arms, not civilian energy as it maintains.

Iran restricts inspections by the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and refuses to lift the curbs until U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed over its failure to prove the program is wholly peaceful are rescinded.

If Iran joined the CNS, it would be subject to international peer reviews and monitoring of its atomic safety standards. There are 66 nations in the convention, mainly Western or industrialized.

MORE OVERSIGHT AT ISSUE?

"Russia itself has urged Iran to join the convention, but Iran may be concerned about greater international oversight," said an EU diplomat taking part in the Vienna gathering.

He said safety standards at Bushehr were also becoming a concern for neighboring Gulf Arab states. Arab League chief Amr Moussa did not answer a question about the issue at a news conference in Vienna on Wednesday.

Some of the concern arises from the fact Iran is situated in a Middle East region prone to armed conflict and earthquakes.

Dale Klein, head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said there were questions about safety standards at Bushehr, and broader concern about a pursuit of nuclear power by developing nations without regulatory regimes being in place first.

"I think all countries with commercial nuclear power plants are concerned that ... others may not fully comprehend the necessity of a strong nuclear regulator before they go down this path," he told reporters in Vienna.

"(With Bushehr), the IAEA has an opportunity to step up and have a team go in and look at it to make sure they do have the training, vision and regulatory framework to ensure that plan can be operated in a safe manner."

Iranian officials say it is their right to have a domestic enrichment program and that an atomic energy industry would both allow Tehran to export more of its oil and prepare for the day when fossil fuel reserves run out.

Iran wants to build other power plants by 2020 as part of a planned network with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts to satisfy mushrooming domestic electricity demand.

Russia contracted to build the plant in 1995, and supply it with enriched uranium, on the basis of an earlier project launched in the 1970s by German firm Siemens but frozen by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)