- (AFP) -- The United States fueled a growing transatlantic
rift over Iran as it dismissed as "impossible to believe" a report
from the UN's nuclear watchdog that said there was no evidence Iran is
pursuing atomic weapons.
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- John Bolton, Washington's top diplomat for arms control,
said the International Atomic Energy Agency's conclusion flew in the face
of established facts. However, he stopped short of directly criticizing
IAEA director general Mohammed ElBaradei who authored the report.
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- "After extensive documentation of Iran's denials
and deceptions over an 18-year period and a long litany of serious violations
of Iran's commitments to the IAEA, the report nonetheless concluded that
'no evidence' had been found of an Iranian nuclear weapons program,"
Bolton said.
-
- "I must say that the report's assertion is simply
impossible to believe," he said in a text released by the State Department
prior to its formal delivery as a speech later Wednesday.
-
- Bolton is a hawk whose outspoken views about weapons
programs in Iran, Syria and Cuba have caused controversy in the past. However,
a State Department official said his remarks on the IAEA report had been
approved at the highest level.
-
- The comments are sure to intensify the emerging transatlantic
row over how best to deal with Iran. A split became apparent earlier Wednesday
when Britain said the report should be dealt with calmly and diplomatically.
-
- The report, released on Monday, accused Iran of conducting
two decades of covert nuclear activities, including making plutonium, but
said there was no evidence as yet it was trying to build an atomic bomb.
-
- But Bolton insisted that Iran is in fact attempting to
develop a nuclear arsenal under the guise of a civilian atomic energy program.
Iran has vehemently denied the charges.
-
- "In what can only be an attempt to build a capacity
to develop nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, Iran has enriched uranium
with both centrifuges and lasers and produced and reprocessed plutonium,"
he said, citing some of the findings of the IAEA report.
-
- Bolton charged Iran with trying to cover up the program
by repeatedly lying to the IAEA, which oversees the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) and omitting information from its reports to the agency.
-
- "The United States believes that the massive and
covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense
only as part of a nuclear weapons program," he said.
-
- The United States wants the IAEA to take the issue to
the UN Security Council unless Tehran meets each and every requirement
laid down by the agency's governing board in September.
-
- Referral to the Security Council could lead to sanctions
and Bolton reiterated the US demand for the IAEA to hold Iran accountable
when the board meets at its Vienna headquarters next week.
-
- "The international community now has to determine
whether Iran has come clean on this program and how to react to the large
number of serious violations to which Iran has admitted," Bolton said.
-
- "If Iran takes all the steps called for in the September
12 resolution, that would represent a major advance toward its integration
into civilized society," he said.
-
- "If it is continuing to conceal its nuclear program
and has again lied to the IAEA, the international community must be prepared
to declare Iran in noncompliance with its IAEA safeguards obligations,"
Bolton said.
-
- Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi will visit Japan
this week for talks with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi over Tehran's
nuclear programme and the situation in Iraq, an official said in Tokyo
Thursday.
-
- Kharazi is expected to arrive in Tokyo late Thursday
and hold talks on Friday with Koizumi and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi,
before heading back to Tehran later that day, the Japanese foreign ministry
official said.
-
- They will also likely discuss a multi-billion dollar
joint development project for the massive Azadegan oilfield, located in
the southwest of the Islamic republic, she said.
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