IAEA head seeks openness from Iran

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says his organization cannot be sure that Iran is not secretly working on nuclear arms, in comments reflecting disappointment with the collapse of talks between Tehran and six world powers.

That meeting ended Saturday with the six failing to persuade Iran to dispel fears of such covert activity by allowing increased IAEA monitoring of its nuclear programs - leaving the UN agency short of applying all inspecting instruments it says it should have a right to.

"Cooperation is not sufficient" by Iran, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told The Associated Press on Monday. "We cannot provide...assurance on the absence of (undeclared) nuclear activities or the exclusively peaceful nature of all the nuclear activities of Iran."

Expectations had been low for the Istanbul meeting. So the six powers - US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany - had avoided putting too much emphasis on their main demand: an end to uranium enrichment, as called for by the UN Security Council.

Iran's enrichment program is of international interest because the process can create both nuclear fuel and fissile nuclear warhead material. While Iran insists it wants to enrich uranium only to run a nuclear reactor network, its nuclear secrecy, refusal to accept fuel from abroad and resistance to IAEA efforts to follow up on suspicions of covert experiments with components of a nuclear weapons program have heightened concerns.

Despite four sets of UN sanctions, Iran insists it will never give up its right to enrich uranium. Since it resumed the process four years ago, it has amassed enough low-enriched material for more than two bombs, should it choose to enrich its uranium to weapons-grade levels.

Separately, it has amassed more than 40 kilograms (nearly 90 pounds) of higher-enriched uranium, which would take less time to turn into weapons grade material, should Iran decide to do so.

Because of Iran's rejection of talks on enrichment, Iran's interlocutors instead had come to the table with more modest hopes, including seeking concessions from Tehran as to what it was ready to show IAEA inspectors.

The problem is less about monitoring facilities and activities that Iran has declared to the agency and more about concerns that the Islamic Republic might be hiding other nuclear work and denying the IAEA the right to search for them.

"We maintain knowledge on Iranian enrichment activities and other nuclear activities which are declared," Amano said. But, he said, "our knowledge is limited to which we have the access."

AP