Crisis looms as Iran resumes nuclear work

Agence France-Presse:

08/08/2005 11h49

ISFAHAN, Iran (AFP) - Iran put itself on a collision course with the West after it resumed ultra-sensitive nuclear fuel work at its uranium conversion plant in Isfahan despite warnings from the international community.

"Iran has resumed the conversion of uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency," the vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency Mohammad Saidi told journalists.

The move, which risks seeing Iran hauled before the UN Security Council, comes after Iran rejected as "unacceptable" a package of EU proposals aimed at guaranteeing that it was not trying to build the bomb.

Iran had insisted it would resume the process, which turns uranium ore into a feed gas for enrichment, despite numerous warnings from the United States and the Europeans.

The EU, which has been negotiating with Iran for nine months, had already called for an emergency meeting Tuesday of the IAEA board during which an ultimatum demanding a commitment to suspend nuclear fuel work is expected.

The crisis has escalated since Iran's ultra-conservative President Mahmood Ahmadinejad took office last week, with the new leader on Monday putting a fellow hardline in charge of the nuclear dossier.

A government spokesman said Ali Larijani, a former boss of state-run media who has distinguished himself by his intransigency over Iran's nuclear ambitions, would soon take up the post.

Larijani replaces Hassan Rowhani, who has managed to maintain dialogue with the West through thick and thin over the last two years, and his appointment will worry some Western negotiators.

Larijani has described giving up Iran's right to uranium enrichment in exchange for EU incentives as like swapping "a pearl for a sweet".

Iran had agreed in November to suspend uranium conversion and enrichment while negotiations on its nuclear programme were under way with the EU-3 of Britain, France and Germany.

But last week it rejected an EU package of trade, technology and security incentives to abandon the nuclear fuel cycle work, sparking warnings that negotiations with the EU could be over and cause Security Council intervention.

Conversion is the initial phase in the process to make fuel for reactors or the explosive core of atom bombs.

Iran's conservative-controlled parliament had demanded that uranium conversion resume ahead of Tuesday's meeting of the IAEA governors, outside the watchdog's supervision if necessary.

The EU incentives, backed by the United States, aim to allow the Islamic republic the right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy activities as long as it refrains from fuel-cycle work that could help it make atomic weapons.

The United States, which is not a party to the EU offer, charges that Iran is using its civilian programme as a cover to secretly develop nuclear weapons, something Iran has always denied.

Tehran insists however that actual enrichment remains suspended at the underground Natanz plant and that it still wants to pursue negotiations with the Europeans.

Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Sunday that Iran, which insists it has the right to enrich uranium under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was unconcerned about possible Security Council action.

"If one day, Iran's case is referred to the UN Security Council, we are not worried. If the Europeans choose this way, it's up to them to see if it is to their benefit or not," he said.