- United Nations nuclear agency, the International Atomic
Energy Agency, is probing a possible link between Iran and Pakistan after
Tehran acknowledged using centrifuge designs that appear identical to ones
used in Pakistan's quest for an atom bomb, diplomats say.
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- Diplomats said the agency was trying to determine whether
the drawings had come from someone in Pakistan or elsewhere.
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- Tehran, accused by Washington of seeking to develop nuclear
weapons, told the UN nuclear agency it got the blueprints from a "middleman"
whose identity the agency had not determined, a Western diplomat told Reuters
on condition of anonymity.
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- It was unclear where the "middleman" got the
drawings.
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- The IAEA has said in a report Iran told the IAEA it got
centrifuge drawings "from a foreign intermediary around 1987".
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- Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel
or in weapons.
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- Experts say the ability to produce such material is crucial
for an arms program and the biggest hurdle any country with ambitions to
build a bomb must overcome.
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- Several diplomats familiar with the IAEA said the blueprints
were of a machine by the Dutch enrichment unit of the British-Dutch-German
consortium Urenco - a leader in the field of centrifuges.
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- Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told
Reuters he had no knowledge a Urenco design had been used by Iran.
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- "This is new information to me," he said.
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- In a statement to Reuters, Urenco said it had not supplied
any centrifuge know-how or machinery to Iran.
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- "Urenco would like to strongly affirm that they
have never supplied any technology or components to Iran at any time,"
it said.
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- Meanwhile, Pakistan, which non-proliferation experts
and diplomats say used the Urenco blueprint, and Iran have repeatedly denied
any cooperation in the nuclear field.
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- Iran has long insisted its centrifuge program is purely
indigenous and that it has received no outside help whatsoever, not from
Pakistan or anywhere else.
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- The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan,
worked at the Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the Dutch city of Almelo
in the 1970s.
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- After his return to Pakistan he was convicted in absentia
of nuclear espionage by an Amsterdam court, but the verdict was overturned
on appeal.
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- He has acknowledged he did take advantage of his experience
of many years of working on similar projects in Europe and his contacts
with various manufacturing firms.
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- But David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and
head of the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank,
said, "Khan is widely believed to have taken these drawings and developed
them".
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- Mr Khan is known to have visited Iran, but the diplomats
said there was no proof of a link involving him and his laboratories in
Pakistan.
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- The United States accuses Iran of using its nuclear power
program, parts of which it kept hidden from the IAEA for 18 years, as a
front to build an atom bomb.
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- Tehran denies this.
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- On Wednesday, the IAEA Board of Governors unanimously
approved a resolution that "strongly deplores" Iran's two-decade
concealment of its centrifuge enrichment program, while praising its promises
to be transparent from now on.
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- The IAEA is still investigating Iran's enrichment program
in order to identify the origin of traces of highly-enriched uranium (HEU)
inspectors found at the Natanz enrichment plant and the Kalaye Electric
Company.
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- But when IAEA experts visited Iran's pilot enrichment
plant at Natanz earlier this year, they saw it bore the marks of the centrifuges
outlined in the Urenco designs, diplomats said.
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- They said Tehran later acknowledged it had used the Urenco
designs and recently showed them to the IAEA.
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- Iran also admitted to a massive procurement effort to
get centrifuge components.
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- Iran says some of these components, purchased through
"middlemen" in the middle of 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, were contaminated
with HEU.
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- The Iranians say this is why the IAEA found HEU traces
at Natanz and Kalaye, where centrifuge parts were tested and manufactured.
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- Diplomats and non-proliferation experts say Iran's centrifuge
program based on the Urenco design appears to have been more successful
than Pakistan's.
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- They say Pakistan eventually abandoned the Urenco model
and chose another one.
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- http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s999179.htm
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