Iran-Pakistan Atomic Link Seen
ISTANBUL, Turkey — The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency is investigating potential links between the atomic programs of Iran and Pakistan after discovering that the secret Iranian uranium-enrichment program used technology identical to Pakistani plans, diplomats said.
Tehran acknowledged to the International Atomic Energy Agency that its centrifuge enrichment program was based on designs by a European firm, Urenco. Diplomats said the designs were the same Urenco-based technology used by Pakistan to develop its nuclear bomb in the 1990s.
Centrifuges are used to process uranium into fuel for reactors or fissile material for bombs. The purification process is complex, and perfecting the machines, which spin at twice the speed of sound, can take years.
The most recent IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program said Tehran started research in 1985 and got the centrifuge designs "from a foreign intermediary in 1987." Iran has told the agency that they came from a middleman whose identity remains a mystery.
The United States has accused Iran of using a civilian program to conceal efforts to develop an atomic bomb. IAEA inspections in recent months have uncovered numerous instances in which Iran concealed nuclear activities that could have played a role in developing an atomic bomb.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program exists solely to generate electricity. This month, Tehran agreed to provide the IAEA with a full disclosure of its program's history and accept tougher IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.
On Wednesday, the IAEA governing board in Vienna condemned Iran for its long cover-up of sensitive nuclear research and warned that any future violation of its nonproliferation obligations could result in sanctions.
The board stopped short of referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, as the Bush administration initially wanted.
A Western diplomat said in a telephone interview Thursday that the U.S. believed that Iran was still hiding activities and that the matter eventually would go to the U.N.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, said a new report on Iran would be ready for the agency's board in mid-February. He said the agency's inspectors had "a lot of work to do before we can conclude that Iran's program is exclusively for peaceful purposes."
