IAEA chief not protecting confidential information: Iranian IAEA ambassador

TEHRAN,Sept.26(MNA) – The Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said that IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano is not protecting confidential information about Iran’s nuclear activities. Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh made the remarks during an interview with the Inter Press Service News Agency published on Monday in reference to the remarks that Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Fereydoun Abbasi made in Vienna on September 17. Abbasi had said that the sabotage of power to the Fordo facility the night before an IAEA request for a snap inspection of the facility showed that the agency could be infiltrated by “terrorists and saboteurs”. Soltanieh said, “The objection we have is that the DG (director general) isn’t protecting confidential information.” He added, “When they have information on how many centrifuges are working and how many are not working, this is a very serious concern.” Iran has complained for years about information gathered by IAEA inspectors, including data on personnel in the Iranian nuclear program, being made available to U.S., Israeli, and European intelligence agencies. Iran offered deal to halt 20 percent enrichment in return for lifting of sanctions Elsewehre in his remarks, Soltanieh commented on the meeting that the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, held with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton over Tehran’s nuclear program in Istanbul on September 18. Ashton represents the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) in nuclear negotiations with Iran, and Jalili is Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. Soltanieh stated that during the meeting, Iran again offered to stop producing uranium enriched to a purity level of 20 percent in return for the lifting of sanctions. The six major powers have demanded that Iran halt 20 percent enrichment, shut down the Fordo uranium enrichment facility, and ship all of its stocks of 20 percent enriched uranium out of the country. And Iran’s main demand is that its right to uranium enrichment, as enumerated in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, be recognized. The Iranian ambassador to the IAEA added, “We are prepared to suspend enrichment to 20 percent, provided we find a reciprocal step compatible with it.” “We said this in Istanbul,” he added. “If we do that,” Soltanieh said, “there shouldn’t be sanctions.” He also repeated the past Iranian rejection of any deal involving the closure of Fordo. “It’s impossible if they expect us to close Fordo,” Soltanieh said. The U.S. justification for the demand for the closure of Fordo has been that it has been used for enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, claiming that it makes it much easier for Iran to continue enrichment to weapons grade levels. But Soltanieh pointed to the conversion of half the stockpile to fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, which was documented in the IAEA report released on August 30. “The most important thing in the report,” Soltanieh said, was “a great percentage of 20-percent enriched uranium already converted to powder for the Tehran Research Reactor.” That conversion to powder for fuel plates makes the uranium unavailable for reconversion to a form that could be enriched to weapons grade level. Soltanieh suggested that the Iranian demonstration of the technical capability for such conversion, which apparently took the United States and other 5+1 group countries by surprise, has rendered irrelevant the group’s demand to ship the entire stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium out of the country. “This capacity shows that we don’t need fuel from other countries,” he stated. Elsewhere in his remarks, Soltanieh said that two senior IAEA officials had accepted a key Iranian demand in the most recent negotiating session in Vienna on August 24 on a “structured agreement” on Iranian cooperation on allegations of “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program – only to withdraw the concession at the end of the meeting. The issue was Iran’s insistence on being given all the documents on which the IAEA bases the allegations of Iranian research related to nuclear weapons which Iran is expected to explain to the IAEA’s satisfaction. The February 20 negotiating text shows that the IAEA sought to evade any requirement for sharing any such documents by qualifying the commitment with the phrase “where appropriate.” At the most recent meeting, however, the IAEA negotiators, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards Herman Nackaerts and Assistant Director General Rafael Grossi agreed for the first time to a commitment to “deliver the documents related to activities claimed to have been conducted by Iran”, according to Soltanieh. At the end of the meeting, however, Nackaerts and Grossi “put this language in brackets”, thus leaving it unresolved, Soltanieh said. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei recalls in his 2011 memoirs that he had “constantly pressed the source of the information” on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research – meaning the United States – “to allow us to share copies with Iran”. He writes that he asked how he could “accuse a person without revealing the accusations against him?” Soltanieh confirmed that the other unresolved issue is whether the IAEA investigation will be open-ended or not. The February 20 negotiating text showed that Iran demanded a discrete list of topics to which the IAEA inquiry would be limited and a requirement that each topic would be considered “concluded” once Iran had answered the questions and delivered the information requested. But the IAEA insisted on being able to “return” to topics that had been “discussed earlier”, according to the February negotiating text. That position remains unchanged, according to Soltanieh. The Iranian ambassador quoted an IAEA negotiator as asking, “What if next month we receive something else — some additional information?” “If the IAEA had its way,” Soltanieh said, “it would be another 10 or 20 years.” Amano reneged on promise about mid-October meeting In addition, Soltanieh stated that a meeting between Iran and the IAEA set for mid-October had been agreed before the IAEA Board of Governors earlier this month with Nackaerts and Grossi. The Iranian ambassador said the IAEA officials had promised him that Director General Yukia Amano would announce the meeting during the Board meeting, but Amano made no such announcement. Instead, after a meeting with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran chief, Amano only referred to the “readiness of agency negotiators to meet with Iran in the near future.” “He didn’t keep the promise,” said Soltanieh, adding that Iran would have to “study in the capital” how to respond.