VIENNA,
June 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Dashing U.S. hopes for a
clear condemnation of Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) only urged Tehran Thursday, June 19, to sign an additional
protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to allow stricter
inspections of all its nuclear facilities.
The
statement, which was swiftly rejected by Iran, did not match Washington
aspirations, especially after U.S. President George W. Bush stressed
Wednesday, June 18, the "international community must come together
to make it very clear to Iran that we will not tolerate the construction
of a nuclear weapon.
"Iran
would be dangerous if they have a nuclear weapon," he claimed.
A
senior western diplomat said the IAEA, caught between the U.S. hardline
and objections from Iran and non-aligned countries, had come up with a
compromise which was "highly acceptable" to the United States.
"You
have to take what you can get," the diplomat said.
IAEA
chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the U.N. watchdog reached a "broad
sense" at the board meeting "that Iran should accept (a new
protocol for inspections) without any conditions".
He
said "safeguards have to be implemented in a very comprehensive,
very conspicuous, very rigid manner to build confidence. They need to be
completely transparent and the issues before us should be resolved as
soon as possible."
 |
| "The
international community must come together to make it very clear
to Iran that we will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear
weapon," Bush said
|
Even
without agreeing to new protocol, Iran should "give us full access
to all the locations, all the sites we would like to visit," he
ElBaradei said.
In
its statement, the IAEA "urged Iran to promptly and unconditionally
conclude and implement an additional protocol to its Safeguards
Agreement" to allow inspections of all sites, including those not
declared by Tehran.
But
Iranian representative Ali Selehi said Iran, which is on the IAEA board,
did not accept this.
"We
have dissociated ourselves from that part of the statement," he
told reporters, adding Iran had won the support of 15 non-aligned
countries on the IAEA board.
Selehi
said, however, that Iran would look positively on a new protocol if
there was "confidence building and trust" with the IAEA.
He
welcomed part of the statement from the Kuwaiti chairman of the board,
Nabeela Al-Mulla, which hailed Tehran's commitment to transparency.
The
statement added that the board "expected Iran to grant the agency
all access deemed necessary by the agency in order to create the
necessary confidence in the international community."
Selehi
said the "process of cooperation will go on with the IAEA
unhindered," but added "we cannot bind ourselves more than we
are committed to" in a reference to current safeguards agreements
which limit the sites where IAEA inspectors can go.
The
board also "called on Iran to permit the agency to take
environmental samples at the particular location where allegation about
enrichment activities exists," a reference to an Kalaye electrical
plant where IAEA inspectors were turned away.
Russia
Welcomes
Russia
on Thursday welcomed the IAEA decision to refrain from slapping tough
sanctions on Iran.
"The
IAEA's board of governors did not go down the path of adopting strict
resolutions condemning Iran," Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov
was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Fedotov
said Russia was "satisfied" that the IAEA had adopted a
"balanced declaration, which on the one hand noted that Iran did
not reveal all its nuclear material and programs, but on the other hand
noted that Iran was taking steps to redress the situation."
