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Iran nuke report 'incorrect'
11/12/2007 18:32 - (SA)
New York - Iran did shut down its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 but restarted it a year later, dispersing the equipment to thwart international inspectors, an overseas Iranian opposition group told the Wall Street Journal.
The group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), exposed the country's nuclear-fuel programme in 2002 and now believes a recent US analysis is giving the wrong impression that Iran's nuclear programme is not an urgent threat, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The US National Intelligence Estimate published last week said Iran's weapons programme was frozen in 2003, contradicting an earlier report that the Islamic Republic was determined to build a nuclear bomb.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert disagreed, saying Israel believes Iran will have the resources to create a nuclear weapon by 2010. But the estimate dampened any enthusiasm among Russia and China for more UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.
The NCRI is listed by the US as a terrorist organisation, and its armed wing is seen as a terrorist group by the EU. The NCRI has had a mixed record of accuracy with its nuclear claims about Iran, the Journal said.
The NCRI does agree that Iran's Supreme National Security Council decided to shut down its most important nuclear weapons research centre in eastern Tehran, called Lavisan-Shian, in August 2003, the Journal said.
But the group, which claims it has sources inside Iran, said the facility was broken into 11 fields of research, including projects to develop a nuclear trigger and shape weapons-grade uranium into a warhead, the paper said.
"They scattered the weaponisation programme to other locations and restarted in 2004," Mohammad Mohaddessin, the NCRI's foreign affairs chief, told the Journal.
"Their strategy was that if the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) found any one piece of this research programme, it would be possible to justify it as civilian. But so long as it was all together, they wouldn't be able to."
Torn down and bulldozed
By the time international inspectors were allowed to visit the Lavisan site, the buildings Iran claimed were devoted to nuclear research had been torn down and the ground bulldozed, the paper said.
The NCRI said the equipment was moved to another military compound known as the Centre for Readiness and Advanced Technology, to Malek-Ashtar University Isfahan and to a defence ministry hospital in Tehran.
The NCRI says it was added to the EU terrorist list under pressure from Tehran at a time when Western countries were trying to improve relations with Iran.
Officials from the US, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China will hold talks on Tuesday on finalising the text of a third UN sanctions resolution against Iran, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday.
"Most states have found that we have the right strategy and the key is still to get Iran to stop its enrichment and reprocessing so that we can begin negotiations to meet the legitimate need for civilian nuclear power," Rice said.
- Reuters
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