The United Nations atomic agency’s call on Iran to suspend fully uranium enrichment goes against the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a senior Iranian official said in Vienna on Monday.
Iranian atomic energy chief Reza Aghazadeh said parts of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) resolution on Iran adopted on Saturday ”are contrary to the letter and spirit of the agency’s statute and the NPT”.
Uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for nuclear reactors but also the explosive core of atomic bombs, is not banned by the NPT, and Aghazadeh said the call on Iran to suspend enrichment goes ”beyond the safeguards obligations” of the NPT.
Iran has suspended actually enriching uranium, but not all support activities, as a voluntary measure to build confidence with the IAEA, which is investigating United States accusations that the Islamic republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Aghazadeh said that the IAEA’s obliging Iran with the resolution to suspend enrichment shows ”no clear distinction between volontary and obligatory measures”.
”In addition to that, calling upon a member state to suspend or stop activities, such as enrichment, uranium conversion as well as the construction of a research reactor planned to propose radio-isotopes for medical, agricultural and industrial purposes, which are in no way prohibited in the agency’s statute and NPT, will undermine the credibility” of the IAEA, Aghazadeh said.
The IAEA is a UN body that monitors compliance with the NPT. — Sapa-AFP
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