By NNN-APP,
New York : A confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, said that Iran had enough information to produce a nuclear bomb, the New York Times reported Sunday.
Western powers accuse Iran of attempting to build atomic weapons, but Tehran says its nuclear programme is aimed at generating nuclear energy for civilian purposes.
Iran has “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” nuclear weapon, the newspaper quotes the report as saying.
At the same time, the report, produced in consultations with nuclear weapons experts both inside and outside the IAEA, stresses in its introduction that the conclusions are tentative and are subject to further confirmation.
The report, titled “Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Programme,” says Iran’s Ministry of Defence runs a complex programme “aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system,” with a range of 2,100 km (1,300 miles).
“The atomic agency’s report also presents evidence that beyond improving upon bomb-making information gathered from rogue nuclear experts around the world, Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a weapon,” the paper said.
According to the report, the programme apparently began in early 2002. The report does not specify how far that work has progressed, however.
The Times published the report as IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Iran on Saturday to discuss inspections of the country’s controversial second uranium enrichment facility.
The visit comes two days after talks in Geneva between Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, and representatives of six world powers. Western officials said that in the talks, Iran had agreed “in principle” to ship out most of its enriched uranium for reprocessing in Russia and France.
The meeting with the ‘Iran Six’ was convened soon after news of Iran’s second uranium enrichment site in Qom led to calls for harsher sanctions against Tehran.