By IRNA,
London : A former US national security official says the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no “credible evidence” of a nuclear-weapons program in Iran.
Gary Sick, from the University of Columbia, told IRNA Friday that according to US intelligence Iran terminated its “experiments with nuclear weaponisation in 2003 after Saddam was defeated and the Iraqi threat to Iran was eliminated.”
Mohamed ElBaradie, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, provided the members of the agency’s Board of Governors with his latest report on Iran’s nuclear program. In it, he said, Iran’s nuclear program is not diverted to the military purposes and the agency continues to verify the non-military nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
Sick said Iran’s nuclear facilities including its centrifuges are under the routine control and inspection by the IAEA.
“Today, after more than two decades, Iran has a single nuclear power plant which is still not functioning and a uranium-enrichment program involving some 5,000 low-capacity centrifuges under routine monitoring and inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Sick said.
Referring to the peaceful intentions of Iran in having a nuclear program, he said Tehran has constantly declared that “it does not intend to build nuclear weapons and the such weapons are anti-Islamic.”
Sick said that the IAEA, though suspicious of Iran’s ultimate intentions, has found no credible evidence of a nuclear-weapons program in Iran.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only but the West is accusing the country of producing enriched uranium for military purposes. The IAEA has for several times indicated that Iran’s nuclear activities are not aimed at military applications.
The British media reported on Friday that Iran has slowed down the rate at which enrichment capacity is expanding. They also quoted UN officials as saying that the country has stockpiled more than 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium even though it has less centrifuges operational since last November.
Earlier last week, Sick told a number of experts in London that the western approach towards Iran’s nuclear program in the past decades has been “misguided and ineffective”.
Referring to three sets of UN-imposed sanctions on Iran and other limitations created by the US government, he said Iranian scientists have been more successful in the past decade in view of the sanctions.
Iran recently put its own satellite “Omid” into orbit, making another acheivement for the country’s science and technology sector which has been under sanctions for the past 30 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“When we started the process of sanctions, Iran did not have a single centrifuge. Now that we are approaching the end of this process, Iran has developed 5,000 centrifuges. It could be impossible for Tehran to access this know-how if the West did not impose sanctions on the country,” Sick said.
He added that Iran should be given the opportunity of playing a more responsible role in the region and a process of confidence building should be initiated between Iran and the West including the Untied States.
He proposed that the new US President Barack Obama open an interest section in Tehran and come to the negotiating table, without any precondition.