by Michael Adler
Agence France Presse – The UN atomic agency on Thursday shelved Iran’s request for technical help in building a nuclear reactor that the United States fears could provide plutonium for weapons.
The decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors came after three days of divisive meetings on technical cooperation that ended with a compromise between Western and developing states.
In another development, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said limited cooperation by Iran had blocked the agency from making "further progress" on clearing up questions about Tehran’s nuclear program, which Washington suspects of hiding weapons development.
But ElBaradei said Iran had recently made "steps in the right direction," by agreeing to let IAEA inspectors take environmental sample swipes on equipment from a former military site at Lavizan and granting access to operating records at a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.
The IAEA had requested these steps for months, as Iran pushed ahead with uranium enrichment in defiance of a UN call for it to suspend the sensitive nuclear work.
The agency’s governing board blocked technical cooperation for the heavy-water reactor Iran is building in Arak, 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Tehran, by dropping the proposal from a list of some 800 aid projects it approved on Thursday for the coming two years, an IAEA spokeswoman said.
US ambassador Gregory Schulte insisted that the deletion of the Iranian request was permanent.
"The Arak project was not deferred. It was not put on hold. It was removed entirely from the IAEA program," Schulte told reporters.
"The removal of Arak, an action taken by consensus, reflects the board’s continued concern about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program," he said. "Heavy water reactors are well-suited to producing significant quantities of plutonium, a key ingredient in building nuclear weapons."
In a face-saving compromise, the Arak project was shelved rather than rejected, with the board’s chairman saying "no decision was taken" on the Iranian request.
An Iranian diplomat described the IAEA move as "only a postponement." Delegates from non-aligned countries anxious to protect the right of developing countries to obtain peaceful nuclear technology also argued that Iran could re-apply at some point for aid to Arak.
A European Union diplomat had said Wednesday that "the bottom line" was a denial of aid for the next two years, by which time there could well be a UN Security Council call for Iran to suspend work at the heavy water reactor.
Tehran says the facility is intended to make medical isotopes. Both the IAEA and the Security Council have called on Iran to "reconsider" building Arak, and a Western diplomat said the IAEA’s decision not to approve technical assistance "should reinforce the point."
The United States and the European Union had argued that Iran, suspected of seeking nuclear weapons and threatened with UN sanctions, had no right to assistance with the reactor.
Schulte said the United States "strongly supports" peaceful nuclear technology for IAEA member states "but neither we nor the board are prepared to help countries build nuclear bombs."
The IAEA board will also be hearing a report from ElBaradei detailing the level of Iranian cooperation with the agency’s investigation into its nuclear program.
The IAEA is still unable, after over three years of inspections, to certify Iran’s program as peaceful.
