Iran has scaled back its uranium enrichment program, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday, suggesting the move on the part of Tehran could signal willingness to resolve the international standoff over its nuclear defiance.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei spoke at the end of a special meeting of his agency's 35-nation board that approved sending an agency team to North Korea as well as agreeing on the IAEA's 2008-2009 budget.
While expressing hope that Iran might go as far as totally freezing enrichment activities -- as demanded by the UN Security Council -- ElBaradei told reporters that there had been a "marked slowdown" in centrifuges on line and in using them to turn out enriched uranium.
IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen was to leave for Tehran yesterday to explore how willing Iran is to make good on pledges that it is ready to answer all outstanding questions about activities that could be linked to a nuclear weapons program.
If Iran honored that promise and froze all enrichment activities, "this would influence the actions" of the six nations -- the five permanent council members and Germany, ElBaradei said, suggesting that the council would desist from approving new sanctions as a result.
He repeated a call for the US to speak directly to Iran over the nuclear standoff.
ElBaradei said: "I think that would help ... in many ways for us to make progress. You need to understand where each other is coming from."
In a report to the IAEA board last month, ElBaradei said that Tehran had assembled just under 2,000 centrifuges in links or cascades of 164 machines each -- the configuration needed to enrich. Diplomats subsequently said that the Iranian technicians were linking up one cascade every two weeks and running their assemblies at their underground facility in Natanz to produce minute quantities of the low-enriched uranium, suitable for generating power.
The enrichment facility is housed near the city of Natanz in halls built underground -- apparently to protect it from attack. Both Israel and the US have not ruled out aerial strikes should Tehran continue to expand the program.
But a diplomat familiar with the issue said Monday that centrifuge assembly ``had significantly slowed'' since ElBaradei met late last month with chief Iranian nuclear envoy Ali Larijani who strengthened a pledge to come up with answers long sought by the agency.
ElBaradei believes that Tehran recognized that moving the enrichment program forward would only provoke the council into passing new sanctions. ElBaradei held out hope Tehran might go even further.
"At this delicate stage, ideally they would even freeze what they have at the present stage," he said.
On the linked issue -- Iran's pledge to be forthright with the agency -- ElBaradei said progress there could go a long way in defusing the crisis.
"If we are able to ... clarify these issues and be able to provide assurances about [the peaceful nature] of Iran's nuclear program, that, obviously, will influence the actions of the Security Council," he said.
The IAEA began investigating Iran's nuclear activities only four years ago, after a dissident group revealed nearly two decades of a clandestine atomic program.
On North Korea, and the return of an agency team to the secretive communist country, ElBaradei cautioned that the IAEA mission -- which is tasked with shutting down the country's plutonium-producing Yongbyon facility -- was only beginning.
"It's going to be a long and complex process, but I welcome the return of the DPRK to the verification process," he said.
ElBaradei said timing for the visit depended on when the North Koreans issued an invitation, perhaps "in the next week or two."
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS