IAEA: Tehran's defiance sets it apart

Vienna: Iran's persistent failure to clear up concerns about its nuclear activities after concealing them for almost 20 years sets it apart from all other nations, the UN atomic watchdog chief said yesterday.

Six world powers are now negotiating on widening sanctions against Iran for pressing ahead with its programme to enrich uranium, a possible route to building atomic bombs, and ignoring a February 21 UN Security Council deadline for it to stop.

"Iran's verification case is sui generis [one of a kind]," Mohammad Al Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in opening remarks to a gathering of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.

"Unlike other verification cases, the IAEA's confidence about the nature of Iran's programme has been shaken because of two decades of undeclared activities [until 2003]," he said.

"This confidence will only be restored when Iran takes the long overdue decision to explain and answer all the agency's questions and concerns about its past nuclear activities in an open and transparent manner."

Iran rejects Western suspicions that it is trying to master nuclear bomb technology under the cover of a civilian atomic energy programme, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

"We have not seen concrete proof of diversion of nuclear material, nor the industrial capacity to produce weapons-usable nuclear material, which is an important consideration in assessing the risk," said A Baradei.

"But quite a few uncertainties remain about experiments, procurements and other activities ..." Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said Iran was willing to resolve outstanding issues "if our nuclear dossier is returned [by the Security Council] to the IAEA where it belongs".

At the meeting likely to run some four days, governors were expected to approve cuts to 22 of 55 IAEA technical aid projects in Iran.