March 4, 2005
The Associated Press
International Herald Tribune
VIENNA Iran is using reinforced materials and tunneling deep underground to store nuclear components - measures meant to make the facility resistant to "bunker busters" and other special weaponry in case of an attack, diplomats said Thursday.
The diplomats spoke as a 35-country meeting of the UN atomic agency ended more than three days of deliberations focusing on Iran and North Korea, another nation of nuclear concern.
An agency review read at the meeting faulted Tehran for starting work on the tunnel at Isfahan without informing the International Atomic Energy Agency beforehand.
The review said Iran, following prodding by the IAEA, has over the past few months provided "preliminary design information" on the tunnel in the central city that is home to the country's uranium enrichment program, and said construction began in September "to increase capacity, safety and security of nuclear material."
The IAEA also said Iran was ignoring calls to scrap plans for a heavy water reactor and continuing construction. Commenting on that Thursday, a diplomat said satellite imagery had revealed that work in the city of Arak had progressed to the point where crews "were pouring the foundations."
Spent fuel from heavy water reactors can yield significant amounts of bomb-grade plutonium.
Asked for details on the tunnel, a diplomat familiar with Iran's dossier said parts of it would run as deep as nearly one kilometer, or about half a mile, below ground and would be constructed of hardened concrete and other special materials meant to withstand severe air attacks.
Other diplomats said such moves were motivated by Iranian concerns of a strike by the United States or Israel; both countries accuse Iran of trying to secretly build nuclear weapons. All of the envoys spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Hundreds of bunker busters were used in U.S. airstrikes on hostile fortified underground command centers, living quarters and storage areas in Afghanistan and Iran.
Last year Israel said it was buying about 5,000 smart bombs from Washington, including 500 1-ton bunker busters capable of destroying concrete walls as thick as two meters, or six feet, fueling speculation of possible preparation for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
While not ruling out the possibility of a U.S. attack, Washington has toned down its rhetoric against Iran. Washington is awaiting the results of European negotiations aimed at getting Tehran to renounce all plans to enrich uranium in exchange for economic concessions and other forms of support - and is even considering backing such incentives.
Uranium enrichment is "dual use," which means it can generate fuel for nuclear power as well as form the core of warheads.
President George W. Bush said fears that Washington was preparing an attack were "ridiculous," but he also said last week that "all options are on the table."
Iran links its fear of an attack to a decision, made during a debate at the Vienna meeting, a gathering of the board of governors of the IAEA, to bar UN nuclear inspectors from some sensitive sites.
Suggesting that leaks could be exploited by Iran's enemies, a senior Iranian envoy, Sirous Nasseri, said Tehran's worries about "confidentiality of information" gathered on such visits "are more intense in view of potential threats of military strikes" against facilities visited by the agency.
Earlier, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, said outside the meeting that the "ball is very much in Iran's court to come clean" by cooperating to clear lingering suspicions about possible nuclear weapons ambitions. Still, the agency has not been able to support U.S. assertions that Iran's programs are aimed at making nuclear weapons.
On North Korea, the agency's other main concern, the meeting urged Pyongyang to return to six-party negotiations over its nuclear program, and to let the agency return to monitoring its atomic activities.
The threat represented by North Korea is "a serious challenge" to "peace and stability in Northeast Asia," and to attempts to control the global spread of nuclear weapons, said a board statement issued Thursday.
In a separate attempt to defuse the North Korean threat, top U.S. and Chinese officials in Seoul discussed tactics meant to lure Pyongyang back to the multiparty talks.
International efforts to bring North Korea back to the discussions have gained urgency since Pyongyang said on Feb. 10 that it had built nuclear weapons and would boycott international disarmament talks indefinitely.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/03/news/iran.html