The UN nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting the Islamic Republic’s scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, while Iran said it is preparing to give more details on its response to international proposals for supplying nuclear fuel. Citing what it describes as “previously unpublished documentation” from an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) compiled dossier, The Guardian reported in its Friday edition that Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of a “two-point implosion” device. 

The IAEA said in September that it has no evidence that Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program. 

The Vienna-based IAEA was not immediately available for comment on Thursday. 

Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran were also unavailable for comment when contacted by Reuters. 

The IAEA statement in September followed reports from the Associated Press quoting what it called a classified IAEA document saying agency experts agreed Iran now had the means to build atomic bombs and was heading toward developing a missile system able to carry a nuclear warhead. 

The Guardian report said that even the existence of two-point implosion nuclear warhead technology is officially secret in both the United States and Britain. 

The technology allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads, making it easier to put a warhead on a missile, the newspaper said. 

Extracts of the dossier have been published before, but it was not known the dossier included documentation of such a sophisticated warhead, the newspaper said. 

UN inspectors found “nothing to be worried about” in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in remarks released on Thursday. 

ElBaradei also told The New York Times he was examining possible compromises to un­block a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and ma­jor powers that has foundered over Iranian objections. 

A nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity. 

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran would give additional details to the IAEA following the initial response it gave to the proposals from three major powers on October 29. 

“We have some more details which we have to give to the IAEA,” state television quoted him on its website as saying. 

“We have three options – enrich the fuel ourselves, buy it directly or exchange our uranium for fuel,” he said. 

“They [the IAEA and the major powers] have to choose from these options. Given the need of Iran to have the fuel, my view is that they will accept another round of discussions,” the minister added. 

Mottaki’s suggestion of further talks came despite a warning from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday that Washington’s patience at Tehran’s failure to give its definitive response was beginning to wear thin. 

She called on Iran to accept unamended the proposals drawn up by the IAEA after talks it held with France, Russia and the United States. 

“As I have said, this is a pivotal moment for Iran, and we urge Iran to accept the agreement as proposed,” Clinton told reporters. 

“We will not alter it, and we will not wait forever,” she said. 

The proposals call for Iran to ship most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment in Russia and conversion by France into fuel for a research reactor located in Tehran. 

They are aimed at allaying Western concerns that Iran could otherwise divert some of the reserves and enrich them further to the much higher levels of purity required to make an atomic bomb, an ambition Tehran strongly denies. 

Iran had been due to give its response to the proposed deal by October 23 but it gave only an initial reply last month, which Iranian media say requested changes to the pace at which it ships out the uranium. 

In his sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran on Friday, hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami asked what guarantee the Islamc Republic  had that it would get the fuel it needs if it shipped out a full 75 percent of its stocks as proposed under the plan. 

“What guarantee do we have that if we deliver our enriched uranium, we will get the fuel?” he asked. 

“If they want to harm our rights, our response will be to enrich the fuel ourselves.” Khatami warned that Iran’s readiness to engage in talks with the United States on its nuclear program was not unconditional. – Reuters, AFP

 

 

TEHRAN: The deputy head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards charged Friday that Pakistan arrested and then released the leader of Jundallah a few days before a suicide bombing claimed by the Sunni rebel group. 

“We have precise information about the movement and places where terrorists are hiding,” the Fars news agency quoted Brigadier General Hossein Salami as saying. 

“On September 26, Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested in one of the streets of Quetta but after one hour he was released following the intervention of the intelligence service of our neighboring country,” Salami said. 

Quetta is the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, which borders Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan Province where Jundallah is active. Ethnic Baluchis, the community the rebel group says it is fighting for, straddle the border. 

Some 42 people, including 15 Revolutionary Guards personnel, died in the October 18 bombing in the Sistan-Baluchestan town of Pisheen. 

“How is it possible that this guy can move freely [unless he is] under the protection of the intelligence services?,” the Guards number two said, according to Fars. 

Iran has said those responsible for the bombing were based in Pakistan and has demanded that Islamabad hand Rigi over. 

Islamabad has strongly denied that Jundallah (Soldiers of God) launched the devastating attack from its territory. 

On Thursday, Pakistani police said three Iranians it had arrested for illegally entering Pakistan may have been linked to the Pisheen bombing. – AFP