9 Mar 2004
The UN’s chief nuclear inspector, Mohammed ElBaradei, yesterday appealed to Pakistan for help in resolving suspicions about Iran’s nuclear activities.
But informed diplomats said that Pakistan, recently revealed to be at the centre of a vast nuclear trafficking network, was refusing to provide detailed information or access to nuclear facilities.
Opening a meeting in Vienna of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr ElBaradei indirectly said Pakistani assistance was critical to making sense of the nuclear clues found by his inspection teams in Iran.
Information from Pakistan is also crucial because of recent revelations of an extensive black market in nuclear technology masterminded by the Pakistani metallurgist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and his confession that he supplied Iran, Libya, and North Korea with illicit nuclear equipment.
“They are not letting us get hold of the discussion with Khan,” one diplomat said.
The status of Iran’s nuclear programmes is the biggest issue at the meeting of the 35-strong board, with the US at odds with the EU troika of Britain, France, and Germany over how to deal with the Iranians. Those differences persisted yesterday, with diplomats shuttling from one meeting to another arguing over the wording of a draft resolution.
One of the biggest riddles concerns traces of highly enriched uranium – the fissile material used for nuclear warheads – found by UN inspectors in Iran last year and never satisfactorily explained.
The Iranians claimed the traces were imported on equipment bought from Khan’s network. But the inspectors need to match the samples with samples in Pakistan to verify the explanation.
Otherwise, the inspectors may conclude that Iran was itself enriching uranium secretly, a crucial step towards obtaining a nuclear bomb.
“It is essential that the [IAEA] receives full cooperation [from] those countries from which nuclear technology and equipment originated,” said Dr ElBaradei.
“This is particularly the case with the major outstanding issue regarding the low and high enriched uranium contamination found [in Iran].”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/09/pakistan.iantraynor