Iran threat not a concern yet
2004-06-29 20:31
Novo-Ogaryovo, Russia - The head of the UN nuclear agency says a planned nuclear plant in Iran is not at the centre of international concern for the time being.
The White House called Iran's decision further proof it was trying to build an atomic bomb, and ElBaradei said on Sunday that he hoped Iran would reverse its decision.
On Tuesday, ElBaradei noted that Iran, like many other countries in the Middle East, supports the regime of non-proliferation.
Meanwhile, ElBaradei, who is heading to Israel next month, has said that Israel should seriously consider talks about making the Middle East a nuclear-weapons free zone, whether or not it admits having such arms.
Achieving peace in the Middle East is directly linked with a restriction on nuclear and conventional arms, he said on Tuesday.
Currently, ElBaradei said some nations, like Israel, believe that first they need to solve the peace problem and only then discuss questions of safety. While in many Arab countries, they want to first provide for safety and then solve the peace question, he said.
ElBaradei said he is convinced that a "parallel dialogue on peace issue and on safety" is needed, adding it would be one of the points of his visit to Israel.
Meanwhile, Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russian Federal Agency on Nuclear Energy, who was also attending the meeting, said that talks are still at a very early stage about creating an international spent fuel storage unit, but that such a facility could be built in Russia.
"It can be built in any country, which has experience of dealing with nuclear materials" and legislation allowing it, Rumyantsev said.
However, Alexei Yablokov, president of the Russian Environmental Policy Centre, told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio that "nowhere in the world has there ever been any technology for the secure storage of such radioactive wastes."
The co-ordinator of the Russian Greenpeace nuclear programme, Vladimir Chuproyev, also said that Russia lacked the technical resources to manage such a project.
- AP