IAEA wants more explanation from Iran
ILNA: The UN atomic watchdog on Monday demanded more information from Iran about the purpose of nuclear site.
The new IAEA report said "Iran's explanation about the purpose of the facility and the chronology of its design and construction requires further clarification." ; AFP reported.
Iran revealed to the IAEA in September that it had built a second uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near Qom. It has told the IAEA in a letter that the new plant should be operational by 2011.
Iran said the site was planned as a back-up plant should the Natanz plant be bombed, for example.
However the IAEA stated "Iran's failure to notify the agency of the new facility until September 2009 was inconsistent with its obligations."
During the visit to the Qom site last month, IAEA inspectors verified that the plant "was built to contain 16 cascades with a total of approximately 3,000 (uranium-enriching) centrifuges," the report stated.
No centrifuges had been installed in Qom, but the plant was "at an advanced stage of construction," the IAEA said, adding that Iran gave the inspectors "access to all areas of the facility."
The IAEA said it has told Iran that it still has "questions about the purpose for which the facility had been intended and how it fit into Iran's nuclear program."
It has requested access to the plant project manager and those responsible for its design "along with access to original design documentation," so that it could confirm Iran's statements on "the purpose of the facility."
Earlier in Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reaffirmed that Iran's nuclear rights were "non-negotiable".
Western powers are awaiting Iran's answer to a UN-brokered plan to supply enriched fuel for a nuclear research reactor in Tehran.
Tehran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said that Iran would continue uranium enrichment and dismissed the latest report as "repetitive".
"Iran will continue to exercise its right to peaceful use of nuclear energy, including enrichment," Soltanieh said.
Soltanieh called on the IAEA's member states to "put an end to this repetitive and tedious path, as the reports by the (atomic) agency chief have nothing new."
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1388/8/26 - 09:23
News number: 90159