Iran will stop building and assembling centrifuges for uranium enrichment this week, the country's nuclear chief said yesterday after a meeting with the chief UN weapons inspector.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the country would "voluntarily" suspend its centrifuge work starting April 9.
Iran "is interested as quickly as possible to bring this case to a close," he said.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, welcomed the announcement and said a new team of inspectors would come to Tehran on April 12 to verify that all uranium enrichment activities had stopped.
ElBaradei arrived in Tehran earlier Tuesday to meet with Iran's president and top Iranian officials in an effort to press the regime for greater openness with its suspect nuclear programs.
"We agreed that we need to accelerate the process of cooperation," ElBaradei said. "Mr. Aghazadeh committed that Iran will do everything possible to accelerate the process of resolving the outstanding issues. I hope during the course of my visit that we can develop an action plan that can have a timeline."
Aghazadeh said he expected Iran's nuclear dossier would be closed by June, at the next meeting of the IAEA's board of governors.
"We will do our best [for] ... our relationship with the agency to be normalized," he said.
But yesterday's announcement countered Iran's claim on March 29 that it had stopped building centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
ElBaradei's trip to Iran was meant to address such indications of continued nuclear cover-ups and signs that even previously reluctant US allies were moving closer to the US view that Tehran should be penalized.
ElBaradei said he would address two key points with top Iranian officials: the origins of traces of highly enriched uranium found in the country, and details on Iran's advanced P-2 centrifuges -- equipment that could be used to enrich uranium for use in a weapon.
Vienna-based diplomats familiar with the IAEA's activities in Iran, where experts have been examining nuclear sites and programs for signs of past and present weapons ambitions, said there is lingering doubt about whether Iran is revealing all of its activities.
Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and geared only toward producing electricity. The US and other nations contend it masks a covert effort to build a nuclear weapon, and an IAEA resolution last month censured Iran for hiding suspicious activities.
"At the end of the day, the issue is to really create confidence that this is a program for peaceful purpose," ElBaradei said Monday, calling on Tehran to "turn over a new leaf."
ElBaradei was to return to Vienna today.
He said last month's resolution showed that the board is "getting a little bit impatient and they would like to see progress."
On Sunday, Iran denied it has hidden any nuclear facilities by shifting them to easier-to-conceal sites.
Iranian officials were responding to alleged intelligence from the US and an unnamed country suggesting that within the past year, Iran had moved nuclear enrichment programs to less detectable locations.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS