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UN Watchdog Hiding Evidence on Iran Nuclear Program

[Ha'aretz] Barak Ravid - The world's nuclear weapons watchdog is hiding data on Iran's drive to obtain nuclear arms, senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials told Ha'aretz. The International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program. Sources said new evidence was submitted to the IAEA in a classified annex written by its inspectors in Iran and signed by the head of the IAEA team there in a classified report that was not incorporated into the agency's published reports. The details were censored by senior officials of the IAEA at the Vienna headquarters. "We expect the details to appear in the new report and to be made public [by Sept. 14]," a senior Western diplomat said. Israel has been striving to pressure the IAEA through friendly nations and have it release the censored annex. It hopes to prove that the Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons is continuing, contrary to claims that Tehran stopped its nuclear program in 2003.
2009-08-19 06:00:00
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