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Iran lawmakers block nuclear inspections
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-21 09:45
Raising the stakes before a key vote by the U.N. nuclear agency, lawmakers
approved a bill Sunday requiring the government to block inspections of atomic
facilities if the agency refers Iran to the Security Council for possible
sanctions.
The bill was favored by 183 of the 197 lawmakers present. The session was
broadcast live on state-run radio four days before the International Atomic
Energy Agency board considers referring Tehran to the Security Council for
violating a nuclear arms control treaty. The council could impose sanctions.
When the bill becomes law, as expected, it likely will strengthen the
government's hand in resisting international pressure to permanently abandon
uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for either nuclear reactors
or atomic bombs.
The United States accuses Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says
its program is for generating electricity.
The bill now will go to the Guardian Council, a hard-line constitutional
watchdog, for ratification. The council is expected to approve the measure.
"If Iran's nuclear file is referred or reported to the U.N. Security Council,
the government will be required to cancel all voluntary measures it has taken
and implement all scientific, research and executive programs to enable the
rights of the nation under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," lawmaker Kazem
Jalali quoted the bill as saying.
Canceling voluntary measures means Iran would stop allowing in-depth IAEA
inspections of its nuclear facilities and would resume uranium enrichment. Iran
has been allowing short-notice inspections of those facilities.
Iran resumed uranium-reprocessing activities — a step before enrichment — at
its Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility in August. It has said it preferred a
negotiated solution to begin uranium enrichment.
The United States and Europe want Iran to permanently halt uranium
enrichment.
But Iran says the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allows it to pursue a
nuclear program for peaceful purposes, and it will never give up the right to
enrich uranium.
"Through this bill, we are declaring to Europe that referring Iran to the
U.N. Security Council means Europeans are pushing the region toward a crisis,"
Jalali told the chamber before the vote.
"If it happens, it will impose a heavy cost on the world, the region and
European countries themselves."
Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also oversees the nuclear program,
said the vote sends a message that Iran will not give up its legitimate rights
to develop a nuclear fuel cycle.
In May, the Guardian Council ratified a bill compelling the government to
continue the nuclear program, including uranium enrichment activities. The law
set no timetable, however, allowing the government room to maneuver during
negotiations with the Europeans.
The 35-member IAEA board of governors meets Thursday in Vienna, Austria. In a
preparatory report, the agency found that Iran received detailed nuclear designs
from a black-market network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's
atomic program. Diplomats say those designs appear to be blueprints for the core
of a nuclear warhead.
Khan's network supplied Libya with information for its now-dismantled nuclear
weapons program that included an engineer's drawing of an atomic bomb.
The document given to Iran in 1987 showed how to cast "enriched, natural and
depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms," said the confidential IAEA
report.
Iran sought Sunday to blunt potential international action over its nuclear
program, labeling the report about its blueprints "baseless."
"This is just a media speculation," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid
Reza Asefi said.
The nuclear program is arguably the only policy in Iran that is supported by
all parts of the political spectrum. It is regarded as a source of national
pride, and any government abandoning enrichment likely would lose
support.
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