Times Online April 27, 2006 – With less than 24 hours before the latest deadline to halt its uranium enrichment expires, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today made another belligerent pledge to press ahead with his nation’s outlawed nuclear programme.
At a rally in the north of the Islamic republic, the President told crowds: "We have obtained the technology for producing nuclear fuel. Thanks to God we are a nuclear state, no one can take that away from our nation."
The President’s claims were bolstered by warnings from an Iranian opposition group in exile, which reported that Tehran was further ahead with its research than it has admitted.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said that the republic was testing a more sophisticated type of centrifuge, the P-2, which can purify uranium more quickly into forms suitable for energy or weaponry.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the NCRI’s foreign affairs committee, said at a news conference in Paris: "The clerical regime will never abandon nuclear weapons because it considers them to be a strategic guarantee for survival.
Mr Mohaddessin claimed that North Korean and Chinese experts had travelled to Iran to check machinery at a research site in Ab-e Ali, north of Tehran.
The NCRI’s information led to the discovery of two decades of covert atomic activity in Iran two years ago, but as the political arm of the outlawed Mujahideen Khalq group, it has a mixed record of accuracy.
Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is expected to inform the board of the United Nations Security Council that Iran has not complied with demands to freeze its uranium purification programme when the watchdog’s 30-day deadline falls tomorrow.
The Council has the power to impose sanctions but China and Russia, which both hold vetos arms contracts with Iran worth hundreds of millions of dollars, have consistently opposed such measures and called for continued diplomacy to resolve the deadlock.
The US has not ruled out military action, in response to which the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened global retaliation.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog is expected to release its report to members of the board of governors and to the UN Security Council tomorrow afternoon. Senior diplomats from the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany are due to discuss the next steps in a meeting in Paris on Tuesday.
Last-minute talks between Iran’s nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh and Mr ElBaradei yesterday failed to make any headway. One diplomat said that Mr Aghazadeh "just rattled around on Iran’s previously stated positions. He did not propose anything new."
Sources in Washington quoted by Reuters suggested that the Western powers may push for a resolution to make the original March 29 demands legally binding. Failure to comply within a set time limit would lead to punitive measures, as yet undisclosed.
This month, in a tacit declaration that three years of diplomacy led by the E3 group of Britain, Germany and France has failed, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that Tehran must face the consequences of its continued refusal to comply
President Vladimir Putin and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking after talks in the Siberian city of Tomsk today, both emphasised the need for diplomacy to solve the Iran stand-off, but differed over the Security Council’s role.
China gave no sign that it was ready to line up behind Western powers seeking sanctions although some analysts believe it is unlikely to block their way. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing called once more for calm, restraint and patience.
Speaking before a dinner of Nato members in the Bulgarian capital Sofia this evening, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who heads the military alliance, said: "Although it is not playing the first violin, what happens in Iran is a very Nato-relevant subject… I think I can safely say that Iran will be a subject of conversation at dinner tonight.