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Iran denies nuclear rumours
18/11/2004 11:57 - (SA)
Tehran - A senior Iranian official on Thursday angrily denied allegations by an exiled opposition group that the clerical regime was running a secret nuclear bomb facility near Tehran, and indicated that United Nations inspectors would be allowed to visit the site.
"I totally deny these allegations. This site is not a nuclear site and has nothing to do with our nuclear activities. Iran has no undeclared nuclear activities," top diplomat and nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian told AFP.
He said Iran has already furnished the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with a 1 030 page report "in which we declared all our nuclear sites and all our nuclear activities."
"We have always responded positively to the agency's inspections requests. We have always co-operated," Moussavian said when asked if IAEA inspectors could visit the alleged secret site.
Agency being manipulated
"But it is not good for the agency to be played and manipulated by a well-known terrorist group," he added. "We are used to such allegations from the hypocrites."
His comments came after an Iranian opposition group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI), alleged that Iran was hiding a uranium enrichment facility in Tehran and aimed to get the atomic bomb next year.
The claims came two days after Iran agreed to suspend enrichment in order to defuse international concern about its nuclear programme - seen by the United States as a cover for a weapons drive.
Senior NCRI member Farid Soleimani told a press conference in Vienna on Wednesday that the Iranian military was hiding an enrichment site in north-east Tehran, "run by Mohsen Fakhri-Zadeh, one of the regime's top nuclear scientists."
"The site is called the Centre for Development of Advanced Defence Technology," Soleimani said, adding that for the Iranian military, 2005 "is the target date for the first bomb."
He also said the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan who has admitted to running an international nuclear smuggling network, had delivered bomb designs and weapons-grade highly enriched uranium to Iran.
Pakistan denied the Iranian opposition claim. "This is a highly exaggerated account. Somebody has let his imagination run wild," a senior government official said in Islamabad.
The NCRI is the political arm of the Iraq-based People's Mujahadeen, which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organisation.
But the council has been instrumental in exposing sensitive Iranian nuclear activities.
The NCRI in 2002 revealed two key nuclear sites Iran had been hiding, including an uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz, which the IAEA subsequently investigated.
The IAEA is investigating United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and is to decide on the Iranian dossier in Vienna on November 25. - AFP
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