Agence France-Presse,
Iran has made progress in enriching uranium despite UN sanctions against this strategic work, UN nuclear inspectors have learned, diplomats told AFP Tuesday.
The news shows Iran is moving towards meeting the claim made in April by its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Tehran had achieved an “industrial scale” of enrichment.
Enrichment is the process that makes fuel for nuclear power reactors or, in highly refined form, the raw material for atom bombs.
“They are speeding up some centrifuges and beginning to enrich towards an industrial level” at an underground plant in Natanz, said a diplomat who closely follows Iran's nuclear program.
Iran previously had been running the centrifuges slowly, as many were breaking down, limiting the production of enriched uranium to what were considered research levels, the diplomat said.
Iran is defying demands and sanctions from the UN Security Council for it to suspend enrichment, due to fears it is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
After strong pressure from UN watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Iranians accepted an unannounced visit Sunday from the agency's inspectors, a second diplomat said.
The IAEA is to report by May 23 on Tehran's nuclear work. This could lead to further sanctions.
IAEA chief Mohmaed ElBaradei told the New York Times that while he hoped “the Iranians would listen to the world community (about suspending enrichment). . . from a proliferation perspective, the fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension — keeping them from getting the knowledge — has been overtaken by events.”
US ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte told a seminar in Vienna Tuesday that “we (the United States) think they still haven't fully mastered the technology and we see no interest in allowing Iran to master this technology.”
A diplomat said the Iranians “still have problems, a main one being to run the centrifuges for a long, long period.” Centrifuges spin rotors at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium.
Washington-based non-proliferation analyst David Albright told AFP by telephone that the Iranians “certainly have been learning how to operate centrifuges. The message has been getting out slowly.”
He said the United States now has a “worst-case assessment that by 2010 Iran could make enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb.”
Iran insists its ability to carry out large-scale enrichment must be part of any eventual deal on its nuclear programme.
Iran's nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is to meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana on May 31 for talks aimed at resolving the standoff.
ElBaradei said “the focus should be to stop them from going to industrial scale production,” rather than expecting the Iranians to stop all enrichment.
But Schulte said the United States and its allies would not back down from their insistence that Iran stop all enrichment work in order to win talks on a package of benefits.
Iran wants to get 3,000 centrifuges functioning, which could produce enough enriched uranium in a year for an atom bomb, and eventually have 54,000 running in what it says is a peaceful program to generate electricity.
A diplomat said the Iranians had 1,600 centrifuges running, although not all at full speed, and were installing “cascades” of 164 centrifuges at the rate of one cascade about every 10 days.
Iran had in April blocked IAEA inspectors from making an unannounced visit to the Natanz bunker site, diplomats said, but the IAEA has denied there were any access problems.
Iran had agreed to unannounced visits, in which it gets two hours rather than a week's notice of an inspection, in early April in return for IAEA surveillance cameras not being set up, diplomats said.
“The Iranians have allowed the IAEA into Natanz but did not let the inspectors get close to the centrifuges” which are in a huge hall, a diplomat said.
