Iran being held to unfair nuclear standards-- Asia Times Article

[TexasLawyer]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI07Ak05.html

Middle East
Sep 7, 2005


ElBaradei's report deconstructed

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Two years ago, Mohammad ElBaradei, the chief of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), repeatedly insisted that Iran should sign the intrusive, but voluntary, Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)<1> .

Now he has gone on record as stating that Iran must comply with other measures "well beyond the Additional Protocol". Clearly, the sky is the limit and the IAEA has been pressured to make unreasonable demands on Iran well beyond the purview of its agreements with that country. The European Union - three of whose countries, Britain, France and Germany (EU-3) are negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program - on Saturday pressed Iran to halt its resumed conversion activities before September 19, the date when the IAEA will hold its Board of Governors' meeting.

Europe's ultimatum came soon after ElBaradei submitted a comprehensive report on Tehran's nuclear program, which criticized Iran for failing to keep its suspension on uranium-enrichment activities and defined Tehran's cooperation with the agency on its nuclear issue as "overdue".
In his report of September 3, ElBaradei, after a restatement of his previous reports on Iran listing the areas of cooperation and non-cooperation, demanded that Iran's "transparency measures should extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol and include access to individuals, documentation related to procurement, dual-use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and development locations".(Item 50).

This raises a curious question: can Iran, short of giving up all its military secrets and revealing sensitive military information to the West via the IAEA, ever appease the IAEA and its increasingly demanding chief? Probably not, at least not as long as Western pressure to dispatch Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council is on.

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