IAEA report gives US 'very strong grounds' for sanctions

Washington: The Bush administration stepped up its campaign for tougher sanctions against Iran on Friday after a UN report concluded that Tehran had not fully come clean about past activities that US experts say were part of a secret nuclear weapons programme.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also said Iran is making steady progress in producing enriched uranium - a crucial ingredient in both nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear power - in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. But the nuclear watchdog reported no evidence that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear device.

The mixed verdict provided fresh ammunition for a White House that is seeking to rally international support for a third UN resolution imposing sanctions against the Islamic republic. Hours after the release of the report in Vienna, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there were now "very strong" grounds for moving quickly at the UN to pass such a resolution.

Iran "is clearly making all kinds of statements that suggest that it's not going to deal with the will of the international community," Rice said. "It hasn't answered questions about past activities in covert programmes that they say they didn't have."

Detailed case

As she spoke, the State Department was beginning to lobby allies to pass the long-delayed sanctions resolution against Iran. The State Department announced it will host talks tomorrow among the world's major powers, including Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, in the hope of getting the resolution passed. The IAEA concluded that Iran had answered most questions about its nuclear past, with a key exception: It has not yet responded credibly to US allegations that it conducted weapons research in the 1990s.

Those allegations, based on documents taken from a stolen Iranian laptop in 2004, are part of a highly detailed case made by US officials to show that Iran had conducted research into building nuclear weapons through the 1990s. US intelligence agencies concluded last year that Iran ended its weapons research in 2003.

IAEA officials confronted Iran earlier this month with evidence of its past weapons research. But Iran, which has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, told IAEA officials that the US claims were "baseless' and dismissed the supporting documents as "fabrications," the IAEA report said.

In the Iranian capital, the country's top nuclear negotiator hailed the report as a vindication of Tehran's nuclear policies. "The report showed that our activities are peaceful," Saeed Jalili said. "From our viewpoint, this issue has ended."