LUXEMBOURG: El Baradei, believes that Iran is still between three and eight years from producing nuclear weapons

Iran is probably between three and eight years away from producing a nuclear weapon if it decided to take that route, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei said on Thursday (May 24). The Islamic Republic denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying its programme its purely civilian to generate electricity. But El Baradei voiced concern that Tehran was moving towards confrontation with the international community by accelerating its nuclear programme in defiance of U.N. Security Council calls to suspend uranium enrichment. "My proliferation priority should be be that Iran should not be able to go to industrial scale," he said, underlining that the IAEA's knowledge about the Iranian programme was declining because it was unable to conduct robust inspections. Several months ago ElBaradei was quoted as estimating that Tehran was four to eight years away from producing an atom bomb if it chose to do so, and he repeated his comment on Thursday. "I tend, based on our analysis, to agree with people like John Negroponte and new director of the CIA, who are saying that even if Iran wanted to go for a nuclear weapon, it would not be before the end of this decade or sometime in the middle of the next decade. In other words three to eight years from now," he told a news conference in Luxembourg. ElBaradei, attending a conference on avoiding nuclear catastrophes, said his top priority was to prevent Iran achieving industrial-scale production of enriched uranium and to make room for a negotiated settlement. But he said the agency had seen no evidence that Iran was trying to "weaponise" nuclear material or of undeclared nuclear facilities operating in the country. He did not repeat comments last week that the Western strategy of denying Iranian all enrichment capacity was obsolete, and stressed that Iran should suspend enrichment activities as a confidence-building measure. The IAEA said in a report on Wednesday (May 23) that Iran was making substantial advances in uranium enrichment in defiance of world demands, and despite Western warnings that it will face tougher sanctions if it continues.

ITN Source | May 24, 2007

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