UN nuclear watchdog board passes resolution demanding answers, access from Iran

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By Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) -The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution on Thursday saying Iran must inform it “without delay” of the status of its enriched uranium stock and bombed atomic sites, diplomats at the closed-door meeting said.

The resolution’s purpose was primarily to renew and adjust the International Atomic Energy Agency’s mandate to report on aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme, but it also stated Iran must quickly provide the IAEA with the answers and access it wants, five months after airstrikes by Israel and the U.S.

Iran, which says its nuclear aims are entirely peaceful, warned before the U.S. and Europe’s top three powers submitted this resolution that if it passed, it would “adversely affect” Tehran’s cooperation with the agency.

“Our message is clear: Iran must resolve its safeguards issues without delay. It must provide practical cooperation through access, answers, restoration of monitoring, to enable the agency to do its job and help rebuild confidence,” the U.S., Britain, France and Germany said in a statement to the board.

IAEA: VERIFICATION IS ‘LONG OVERDUE’

The resolution passed with 19 votes in favour, three against and 12 abstentions, diplomats at the meeting in Vienna said. Russia, China and Niger were the countries that opposed it.

“Iran must … provide the agency without delay with precise information on nuclear material accountancy and safeguarded nuclear facilities in Iran, and grant the agency all access it requires to verify this information,” the draft resolution text submitted to the board and seen by Reuters said.

Iran still has not let inspectors into the nuclear sites Israel and the United States bombed in June, and the IAEA says that accounting for Iran’s enriched uranium stock, which includes material close to bomb-grade, is “long overdue” and the issue needs to be addressed “urgently”.

The IAEA cannot inspect the bombed facilities or verify Iran’s uranium stock until Tehran submits a report updating it on what has happened to them. The bombed sites include Iran’s three enrichment plants that were operating at the time.

When Israel first bombed Iran’s nuclear sites on June 13, the IAEA estimates that Iran had 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile purity, a short step from the roughly 90% of weapons-grade, in a form that can easily be enriched further.

Iran says it can enrich to whatever level it wants in view of its peaceful objectives.

That is enough in principle, if it were to be enriched further, for 10 nuclear bombs, according to an IAEA yardstick.

THERE WILL BE ‘CONSEQUENCES’, IRAN SAYS

Western powers say there is no civil explanation for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says it is “a matter of serious concern”.

“We are of the firm view that any provocative action – such as the introduction of yet another resolution – would jeopardise and potentially nullify the considerable efforts undertaken by the (IAEA) Director General and Iran to advance dialogue and cooperation,” Iran said in a joint statement to the board with allies including Russia, China, Cuba and Belarus.

The IAEA and Iran announced an agreement in September in Cairo that was supposed to pave the way towards full inspections and verification, but Tehran said last month that deal is void.

“I’m afraid the resolution will have its own consequences,” Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters after the vote. Asked what those were, he said: “We will announce the consequences later.”

The only specific measure announced by Iran soon afterwards was that it was formally notifying the IAEA of the Cairo agreement’s termination.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; additional reporting by Elwely Elwelly in Dubai; editing by Alison Williams, Hugh Lawson and Mark Heinrich)