IAEA investigates Russian role in Iran N-programme

Saturday, October 11, 2008 at 2:10 am

International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments related to detonating a nuclear weapon, a media report said today (October 10).

As part of the investigation, inspectors at the IAEA are seeking information from the scientist, who they believe acted on his own as an adviser on the experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, American and European officials said.

The unidentified officials had made it clear they did not think the scientist was working on behalf of the Russian government.

Still, it is the first time that the nuclear agency has suggested that Iran may have received help from a foreign weapons scientist in developing nuclear arms, it added.

American and European officials said the new document, written in Persian, was part of an accumulation of evidences that Iran had worked toward developing a nuclear weapon, despite its claims that its atomic work has been aimed at producing electrical power.

In February, in a closed-door briefing at the agency headquarters in Vienna, its chief nuclear inspector presented diplomats from several countries with newly declassified documents, sketches and even a video that he said raised questions about whether Iran had tried to design a weapon.

Among the data presented by Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector, were indications that the Iranians had worked on exploding detonators that are critical for the firing of most nuclear weapons, the paper said.

The Iranian envoy at the briefing called the charges “groundless” and protested that the tests were for conventional arms.

Heinonen, however, called the shape and timing involved in the firing systems and detonators “key components of nuclear weapons.”

At the same time, the paper said Heinonen acknowledged that the agency “did not have sufficient information at this stage to conclude whether the allegations are groundless or the data fabricated.”

The new document under investigation offers further evidence of such experiments, the Western officials were quoted as saying.

Iranian officials, the paper noted, have said repeatedly that the documents the agency is using in its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities are fabrications or forgeries, and that any experiments were not related to nuclear weapons.

Iran has said the same about the new evidence, although the agency has not shown the full document to government officials in Tehran.

The officials said that the conditions under which the inspectors obtained the document prohibited them from revealing it in full to the Iranians, out of fear that doing so could expose the source of the document.

These restrictions, present a problem for Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director general, who is pressing Iran to reveal its past nuclear activity.

“I cannot accuse a person without providing him or her with the evidence,” he said last year.

Although officials would not say how they had obtained the new document, it was first publicly mentioned in an agency report in May as one of 18 documents presented to Iran in connection with suspected nuclear weapons studies.

(Agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

IAEA investigates Russian role in Iran N-programme

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