ISTANBUL, Turkey — A harshly worded new report by the U.N. atomic watchdog agency says that Iran was concealing some of its nuclear activities as recently as last month but that inspectors have found no proof of an active weapons program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency document says inspectors recently discovered that Iran had engaged in experiments to reprocess plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Iran last month admitted the experiments on reprocessing, which could be a step toward weapons development.
The document also says that Iran now acknowledges operating a secret uranium enrichment program using lasers for 12 years and using uranium chemicals imported from China in experiments to enrich uranium at a previously secret location. Enrichment is a process that purifies uranium for use in reactors or weapons.
Earlier, when the IAEA had noted that the Chinese chemicals were missing and asked Iran about them, Tehran claimed they had leaked out of storage canisters.
A copy of the 30-page report was provided to the Los Angeles Times on Monday by a Western diplomat in Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered.
In its toughest language, the report said: "Based on all information currently available to the agency, it is clear that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its safeguard agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material and its processing and use."
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, said in the report that inspectors had turned up no evidence that the concealed activities were linked to a nuclear weapons program.
"However, given Iran's past pattern of concealment, it will take some time before the agency is able to conclude that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purpose," he said.
The report, which notes that the IAEA investigation is continuing, detailed nine separate instances in which it said Iran had failed to report nuclear activities as required under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or failed to provide required information to the agency.
The Western diplomat in Vienna said in a telephone interview that this was the first time the agency had used the word "failed" in a report on Iran and that the language marked significant concerns on the part of the IAEA.
Still, the inconclusive verdict on weapons is likely to buy Iran more time to try to persuade the international community that it is pursuing nuclear power to generate electricity, not build an atomic bomb.
