Word: iaea
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This week's emergency meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, comes as Iran has moved to resume uranium enrichment activity, ending its agreement with three European countries to desist from such activity. The IAEA meeting has been billed as a step towards UN sanctions against Iran...
...member states of the IAEA board are debating a resolution urging Iran to halt the uranium conversion activities it re-started this week. They are divided over the wording of the resolution, particularly over any threats to enforce it, although everyone seems agreed on the need to warn Iran against continuing on its present path. If Iran keeps on converting yellowcake uranium to gas, the matter may be referred to the UN Security Council, which has the authority to order Iran to suspend its enrichment activities and impose sanctions. That decision won't come for several weeks though...
...European offer as an 'insult,' precisely because it required Iran to renounce the right it enjoys under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to enrich uranium for energy purposes. Tehran's action this week ended its year-long voluntary suspension of uranium conversion activities. Its top representative to the IAEA was combative yesterday, saying that on the anniversary of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, the U.S. was in "no position whatsoever to preach to anyone about what they should or should not do in their nuclear program...
...Although the NPT gives Iran the right to enrich uranium for energy purposes, the Europeans and the U.S. believe Tehran forfeited that right by concealing part of its nuclear program from IAEA scrutiny for two decades. Although the U.S. was initially skeptical of Europe's diplomatic approach, it subsequently backed that effort. And now, Britain, France and Germany are clearly losing patience with Iran. Ahmadinejad has said he wants negotiations to continue ?without preconditions,? but if Iran insists on continuing its conversion work the talks will likely...
...order to get the matter discussed at the Security Council, Iran would have to be reported by the IAEA as in breach of its NPT obligations. Right now it's unlikely the U.S. and the Europeans would be able to muster the votes on the IAEA board of governors to refer Iran to the Security Council. The developing countries on the board are increasingly critical of what they see as efforts to use the NPT to enforce a nuclear-weapons monopoly on the part of the current nuclear-weapons states, rather than the treaty's original intent, which...