Iran severely restricted access to its Parchin military complex late last year and has refused a new request by the UN nuclear monitoring agency to revisit the facility, a senior agency official said Tuesday.
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Pierre Goldschmidt, a deputy secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also told the IAEA board that Iran continued to build a heavy water reactor in the city of Arak that can produce plutonium, despite agency requests to cease construction on the facility.
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He also indicated that the Iranians had effectively blocked further agency investigations of the purchase of equipment that could be used for a weapons program by denying agency experts further information on the equipment and its current location.
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The comments were part of a brief update by Goldschmidt on Iran’s nuclear record after more than two years of examination by the agency, following the revelation of nearly two decades of clandestine activities that have led to concerns of a possible attempt to make nuclear arms.
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The five-page address by Goldschmidt also was critical of Iran for delays in informing the nuclear agency that it was building tunnels in the central city of Isfahan for nuclear storage and blips in its commitment to totally freeze all activities related to uranium enrichment.
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Goldschmidt also outlined the nuclear black market’s first offer to Iran of enrichment equipment and expertise back in 1987.
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While Iran says it wants enrichment technology to generate power, Washington argues that it wants to do that because the process can also produce weapons-grade material for nuclear warheads.
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Iran has suspended work on its enrichment program pending negotiations with France, Germany and Britain. But it has repeatedly said the freeze is short-term, despite hopes that it will fully scrap its plans.
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But Iran on Tuesday again said it would not give up enrichment.
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“This is something that is not on the table and will not be on the table,” a senior Iranian envoy, Sirius Nasseri, told reporters, saying his country had “gone through blood and sweat and tears” to develop the program.
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Diplomats said over the weekend that Iran had been provided with a written list by members of the nuclear black market network as early as 1987. The diplomats said the list contained all it needed to set up its enrichment program.
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Detailing that offer, Goldschmidt said Tuesday that Iranian officials recently showed agency employees a “handwritten one-page document” of what the Iranians said was the list, including delivery of a sample centrifuge, blueprints for a complete enrichment plant and parts for 2,000 centrifuges.
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Speaking about the military complex, Goldschmidt said that while Iran allowed an initial visit by inspectors in mid-January, the experts’ visits were limited to one site and only five buildings on that site. A new request to revisit another part of the site was refused by Iran on Sunday, he added.
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The United States alleges that Iran may be testing high-explosive components for nuclear weapons, using an inert core of depleted uranium at the complex as a dry run for a bomb that would use fissile material.
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Iran asserts its military is not involved in nuclear activities, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no firm evidence to the contrary.
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The agency also has not been able to support assertions by the United States that nearly two decades of covert nuclear programs discovered more than two years ago are aimed at making nuclear weapons.
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Iran is not obligated to allow agency inspectors access to the complex, which is not considered a nuclear-related site. But an International Atomic Energy Agency report in October expressed concern about published intelligence and media reports relating to equipment and materials that could serve military purposes.
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A separate Iranian decision outlined by Goldschmidt, to block any further inspecting of possible dual-use equipment at the Lavizan-Shian site near Tehran, appeared particularly galling to the IAEA because it effectively shut down one area of the agency’s probe.
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The U.S. State Department last year said Lavizan-Shian’s buildings had been completely dismantled and that top soil had been removed from the site in attempts to hide nuclear-weapons related experiments.
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Chancellor Gerhard Schr