VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog declared on Thursday that Iran failed to meet a February 21 deadline to suspend uranium enrichment and Washington said major powers would meet next week to start writing a new Iran sanctions resolution.
A technician works in the control room at the uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, Iran February 3, 2007. Iran failed to suspend uranium enrichment activity by February 21, ignoring a U.N. Security Council deadline to halt work the West fears could lead to Tehran building an atomic weapon, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said on Thursday. REUTERS/Caren Firouz
By ignoring the deadline, Tehran reaffirmed its rejection of a mid-2006 offer by six world powers of talks on trade benefits provided it halted enrichment, a process that can yield nuclear power plant fuel or bombs.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report Iran had installed two cascades, or networks, of 164 centrifuges in its underground Natanz enrichment plant with another two cascades close to completion.
That amounted to an effort to escalate research-level enrichment of nuclear fuel into “industrial scale” production.
“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” said the confidential IAEA report, obtained by Reuters.
The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran in a December 23 resolution that banned transfers of atomic technology and know-how to Iran. The resolution authorizes the council to take further measures if Iran flouted the deadline.
Additional penalties might include a travel ban on senior Iranian officials and restrictions on non-nuclear business.
UnderSecretary of State Nicholas Burns said he would travel to London on Monday for a meeting of the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany to begin what could be a lengthy process of drafting a second sanctions resolution on Iran.
“We expect to see Iran repudiated again by the Security Council,” Burns said during an appearance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington.
The Islamic Republic, which says its nuclear fuel program is designed only to produce electricity, remained defiant.
“Regarding the suspension mentioned in the report, because such a demand has no legal basis and is against international treaties, naturally, it could not be accepted by Iran,” Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told Reuters in Tehran.
He said the report showed the best way to resolve the dispute was to return to talks.
Analysts say harsher sanctions could face serious obstacles, as Russia, China and some EU powers prefer further dialogue with Iran to Washington’s push to isolate and punish.
The United States has built up aircraft carrier strike forces in the Gulf as a warning to Iran.
URANIUM FUEL
The report said Iranian workers lowered into the Natanz plant an 8.7-ton container of uranium hexafluoride gas (UF-6) to prepare to feed centrifuges, which purify the material into power plant fuel or, if refined to high levels, for bombs.
A senior U.N. official said the two cascades were being test-run in a vacuum and the Iranians had told the IAEA they would start feeding those cascades with UF-6 by the end of this month.
Iran had told the IAEA it intended to have 3,000 centrifuges, divided into 18 cascades, installed and brought “gradually into operation” by May.
The 3,000 centrifuge machines would lay the basis for “industrial-scale” fuel production involving some 54,000 such machines.
Analysts said that was proof Iran was speeding up the installation of the apparatus needed to enrich significant quantities of uranium to give it a stronger hand in any future negotiations with the West.
“What I would say is that it’s now trying to give the impression that it can move quickly to install a large number of cascades and enrich uranium. ... We’ll see what happens, but I would say that they’re enriching uranium faster than commonly expected,” said David Albright, director at the Institute for Science and International Security.
The report also said Iran remained far away from enriching uranium in quantities suitable for use in nuclear energy plants.
Given quality-control problems and inexperience, Iran probably remains three to 10 years away from accumulating enough high-enriched uranium for the core of atom bombs -- assuming it wants them, intelligence estimates and independent analysts say.
Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Paris, Boris Groendahl in Vienna, Carol Giacomo in Washington
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.