IAEA: Iran may be hiding atomic weapons work

PanARMENIAN.Net - The head of the UN nuclear agency on Monday, March 5 said his organization has "serious concerns" that Iran may be hiding secret atomic weapons work, as he acknowledged failure in his latest attempt to probe such suspicions and listed recent atomic advances by Iran, AP reported.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano spoke to the 35-nation IAEA board amid backdoor diplomatic maneuvering aimed at coming up with substantial joint pressure on Iran to end its nuclear defiance and address global concerns about its nuclear activities.

The conference opened as fears grow that Israel may soon strike Iran in an attempt to destroy its nuclear facilities. President Obama is expected to ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for restraint when they meet in Washington later in the day.

Amano summarized the most pressing worries - Tehran's rebuff of two recent attempts to probe the weapons program suspicions and a sharp, recent increase in uranium enrichment, which Iran says it needs for nuclear energy, but which can also produce fissile weapons material.

A senior diplomat from an IAEA member nation said shortly after Amano's opening comments that the United States and its western allies continued to lobby Russia and China to back a resolution critical of Iran's refusal to heed IAEA and UN Security Council demands that it banish such concerns by opting for full nuclear transparency.

The IAEA meeting comes less than two weeks after IAEA experts returned from Tehran from their second failed attempt within a month to persuade Iran to end nearly four years of stonewalling on what the agency says is growing intelligence-based information that Iran has worked - and may still be working - on components of a nuclear weapons program.

Iran dismisses the suspicions as based on fabricated information provided by the United States and Israel.