VIENNA/JERUSALEM: Iran has raised its potential capacity to make sensitive nuclear material by installing hundreds more uranium enrichment machines at an underground site, a UN watchdog report said, a day after world powers failed to convince Tehran to halt such activity.
The International Atomic Energy Agency also said yesterday satellite images show "extensive activities" at the Parchin military complex which inspectors want to check over suspicions that nuclear weapons-relevant research was done there.
The activities could hamper the IAEA's inquiry, it said — an allusion to what Western diplomats have said may be Iranian efforts to remove incriminating evidence. Iran has denied pursuing a clear weapons capability there or anywhere else.
The report further said inspectors had found traces of uranium particles enriched to up to 27 percent at Iran's bunkered Fordow site, compared with the 20 percent level Tehran has officially reported to the IAEA.
The report said Iran had told the UN agency that this higher-grade enrichment — taking Iran significantly further down the road to potential weapons-grade threshold — "may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator's control."
The quarterly report added that Iran had hooked up 368 new centrifuges in Fordow, a 50 percent increase in numbers, but that these were not yet being fed with material for enrichment.
Iran had increased its stockpile of higher-enriched uranium to around 145 kg in May from nearly 110 kg some three months ago, the report went on.
It said the IAEA had told Iran in a letter sent this month that it needed "early access" to Parchin. Iran has repeatedly refused this, maintaining that Parchin is a solely conventional military base beyond the writ of nuclear inspectors.
The IAEA said it had urged Iran to expedite a final agreement to enable inspectors to resume their long-running investigation into suspected nuclear explosive experiments. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano had said on Monday after talks in Tehran that the two sides were close to such a deal although "some differences" remained before it could be sealed. Separately, the head of the US delegation to nuclear talks with Iran arrived in Israel yesterday to brief officials after a meeting in Baghdad that achieved little other than arranging more talks.
Wendy Sherman's visit is the latest in a series of meetings between US and Israeli officials over Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is peaceful but much of the international community suspects is a cover for attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.
US officials were coy about the purpose of her visit but it was clear that the aim was to brief officials in Israel, whose government is highly skeptical about whether diplomacy can prevent Iran obtaining the bomb, about the Baghdad talks.
The two-day meeting in the Iraqi capital saw huge differences emerge over dealing with the key issues in a decade-old standoff over Tehran's program, with the sole tangible outcome being plans to meet again in Moscow on June 18-19.
The government of Israel, the only if undeclared atomic power in the Middle East, sees the country's very existence under threat if its arch foe goes nuclear. Like Washington, it has refused to rule out bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
The US State Department said in a statement that the visit was for "consultations on bilateral and regional issues with senior officials and to reaffirm our unshakeable commitment to Israel's security."
"She has arrived," said US Embassy spokesman Kurt Hoyer. "I'm not 100 percent sure what her schedule is," he added, when asked whom Sherman would be meeting while in the country.
FROM: AGENCIES
Traces of higher-grade uranium detected in Iran
