The Hindu : Teheran may have to sign protocol

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 22, 2003

International

International

Teheran may have to sign protocol

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA June 21. With Russia deciding to halt supplies of nuclear fuel, Iran may now have no option but to sign a new inspections protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency aimed at preventing it from making atomic weapons.

Russia has reportedly decided to hold further atomic fuel supplies as part of an international effort to discourage Iran from making nuclear weapons.

The IAEA board of governors that met in Vienna earlier this week urged Iran to sign an additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Under the terms of the new agreement, inspectors from the IAEA would have the legal right to carry out surprise inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities, suspected of manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The Russian move to halt supplies, analysts say, is not with the intent of punishing Iran. Instead, by encouraging Iran to play by international rules, Moscow wishes to rescue its lucrative commercial nuclear energy partnership with Iran.

Russia and Iran are building a nuclear power plant at Bushehr. But Russia is under intense U.S. pressure to terminate its nuclear collaboration with Iran, which Washington suspects is making nuclear weapons.

An IAEA certification of nuclear weapon free Iran, under the terms of the new protocol, will therefore lift all international pressure and clear Moscow's path for openly collaborating with Teheran in the civilian nuclear energy field.

Keen to assuage U.S. concerns that Iran should not have atomic weapons, Russia has declared that it would soon sign an agreement with Iran to buy back the spent fuel resulting from the operation of the Bushehr plant, which can be chemically treated to yield weapons grade nuclear material.

Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted the Russian Atomic Energy Minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, as saying that the first consignment of spent nuclear fuel could return to Russia in eight to 10 years' time.

The first reactor at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is expected to go on stream by 2005.

While Iran has not opposed signing the new protocol, it is nevertheless linking it to the lifting of the western nuclear energy blockade to which it has been subjected. Iran argues that as a signatory to the NPT, it is entitled to modern nuclear technology, so long as it does not make nuclear weapons.

The IAEA during its deliberations had also urged Tehran to open the Kelaye Electric Company in Teheran for inspections. But on Saturday, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, expressed his reluctance to do so.

"We've had no problem concerning environmental samples, but we've been telling the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) that this location is a non-nuclear location,'' Mr. Aghazadeh told state television.

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