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By Elaine
Sciolino and David E. Sanger
New York Times News Service
Published February 25, 2006
PARIS --
International nuclear inspectors are expected to report next
week that Iran has started producing enriched uranium on a very
small scale, indicating that it is striving to solve
technological problems in its nuclear program, European
officials said Friday.
Only a month after Iran defied Europe and the International
Atomic Energy Agency and declared it would restart what it
called research on enrichment, it has put 10 centrifuges into
operation at the vast uranium enrichment plant at Natanz,
according to the officials.
But it would take more than a thousand machines operating for a
year to produce enough material for one weapon, and it is
unclear how long it will take Iran to work out the problems of
tying those machines into a "cascade" that could produce
bomb-grade fuel.
U.S. and European officials said they viewed Iran's action as
largely a political statement--an effort, in the words of one
senior U.S. official, "to get something in operation in hopes
that the world will just get used to it."
At a meeting of the IAEA board March 6, Bush administration
officials plan to cite the move as evidence that Tehran is
moving as fast as it can to master the fuel cycle. That would
yield the technical knowledge, but not necessarily the
capability, to produce highly enriched uranium for a weapon.
The 10 centrifuges, which European officials say are connected
in a "mini-cascade," had been sealed as part of a voluntary
agreement in November 2004 between Iran and the Europeans that
had frozen Iran's nuclear enrichment-related activities. That
agreement fell apart last month.
But Iran's efforts to reconstitute its operation are still just
beginning. The Institute for Science and International Security,
which monitors Iran, noted Thursday that "Iran still needs to
repair and operate its first 164-machine test cascade at the
Natanz pilot plant," and that it has to overcome considerable
hurdles. "One of the reasons Iran spun many centrifuges is that
they broke, or did not work as expected," the institute said.
The new centrifuges have been run in full view of nuclear
inspectors, a sign that Iran is trying to make a political
statement by openly challenging the international community.
Friday in Washington, President Bush made no reference to the
specific development but once again branded Iran the world's
primary sponsor of terrorism and warned that the United States
never would let the country develop nuclear weapons.
"A non-transparent society that is the world's premier state
sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world's most
dangerous weapons," he said in a speech defending his strategy
in fighting terrorism.
Senior administration officials were quick to latch onto the
news of the operating centrifuges as proof that Iran was trying
to buy time in producing cascades. But some officials in Europe,
including some with direct knowledge of Iran's activities, said
the United States was exaggerating the importance of the
development.
"On its own, I don't think this is a big deal," said one
official in Vienna.
The report next week by the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog,
based in Vienna, is expected to be forwarded to the UN Security
Council after the agency's 35-nation board meets. Officials in
Vienna and Washington say they expect the report to include a
number of worrisome developments besides the news about the
centrifuges.
It is likely to include information disclosed in an interim
agency report last month that concluded there was evidence
suggesting links between Iran's ostensibly peaceful nuclear
program and its military work on high explosives and missiles.
Olli Heinonen, a deputy director general for the nuclear agency,
is heading this weekend to Tehran, where officials have pledged
to cooperate more fully with the agency in anticipation of next
week's reports.
He and his team will press long-standing demands, including
access to the head of a former military site in Tehran,
information about Iran's dealings with an international nuclear
black market that supplied it with atomic technology and
information about possible work related to nuclear weapons.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0602250087feb25,1,1527956.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
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