U.S. Says Iran Deceiving UN About Its Nuclear Program

The International Atomic Energy Agency Vienna, 16 June 2005 (RFE/RL) -- The U.S. today accused Iran of deceiving the UN's nuclear watchdog about its nuclear program and threatened that Washington would not tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons.

Jackie Sanders, the U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament and special representative of the president for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, sent a statement to the governing board of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In it she said: "it is evident that Iran has not come clean about its past or present nuclear activities." Sanders said Iran had been caught again misleading the IAEA about its plutonium separation experiments, claiming it stopped the process in 1993.

In a report today to the IAEA's board of governors, the agency's deputy head, Pierre Goldschmidt, said Iran has admitted to experimenting with plutonium reprocessing until 1998.

Sanders said the U.S. would not accept a nuclear-weapons capable Iran.

(Reuters)