UN Urges `Maximum Restraint' Over Iran's Nuclear Work

The United Nations nuclear watchdog
urged diplomats to exercise ``maximum restraint'' as they try to
avert a crisis between Iran and the U.S. over the Islamic
Republic's resumption of uranium conversion activities.
``I would request all parties to exercise maximum
restraint,'' International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed
ElBaradei said at a news conference in Vienna. ``The only way
these problems can be solved is at the negotiating table.''
The IAEA's board of directors began an emergency meeting
after Iran yesterday resumed uranium conversion activities at its
nuclear plant in the central city of Isfahan. ElBaradei
criticized the Iranian decision to resume its nuclear program
``unilaterally.''
Iranian officials will meet with French, German and U.K.
diplomats twice more before October, ElBaradei said. The so-
called EU-3 offered Iran technology and economic incentives to
stop its uranium processing activities. The Islamic Republic
rejected their offer on Aug. 6.
``The operations at Isfahan will continue,'' said Iran's
head of delegation to the IAEA, Cyrus Nasseri. Iran will probably
remove UN seals tomorrow on additional uranium processing
equipment under suspension, Nasseri said. IAEA observers are in
place and will record the removal of the seals, agency
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

New President

The U.S.-backed European diplomatic effort to get Iran to
step back from the brink of pursuing nuclear arms is a test of
wills between Europe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was sworn in as
Iran's new president Aug. 3. Conversion is an initial step in
enriching uranium, or increasing the concentration of the U-235
isotope that starts and sustains a nuclear reaction.
``Iran must not be allowed to violate its international
commitments and must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons,''
U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA George Schultes said.
The U.S. State Department said in May that it would
recommend that the IAEA refer Iran to the UN Security Council for
possible sanctions were it to end the suspension of uranium
enrichment activities. Any attempt to send Iran to the Security
Council would require a majority vote by the IAEA's 35-member
board.
The so-called non-aligned movement of countries, which has
13 of the board's 35 seats, said that it recognizes Iran's legal
right under international treaties to process uranium and called
for the Islamic Republic to return to negotiations.

Suspension `Voluntary'

Iran's suspension was ``a voluntary and non-legally binding
confidence building measure and it should not be interpreted in
any way as inhibiting or restricting the inalienable right of
member states to develop atomic energy,'' said the group's head,
Malaysian Ambassador Rajmah Hussain.
Russia, which has supplied Iran with the reactor for a
nuclear power station in Bushehr, called on Tehran to stop ``work
on conversion of uranium and continue close cooperation with the
IAEA,'' according to a statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry
Web site.
Iran could have ``continued the moratorium without any harm
to its nuclear energy program,'' it said. Iran's ``only nuclear
energy station, in Bushehr, is fully supplied with fuel from
Russia.'' The participants in the nuclear talks should avoid
``hasty, ill-considered steps'' that could lead to a crisis, the
Russian ministry said.
Iran says it's pursuing nuclear power to hedge against
diminishing oil reserves. Its existing crude production is
depleting at an annual rate of as much as 9.5 percent, Iranian
Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said July 27. Iran is the
second-biggest oil producer in OPEC.

`Insult'

Energy needs in Iran are expected to double in the next 20
years to about 60,000 megawatts annually. The government wants to
generate about 7,000 megawatts of nuclear power for the country's
68 million people.
Ahmadinejad called the EU-3's latest proposal ``an insult''
in a telephone conversation yesterday with UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Annan urged Iran to exercise ``restraint'' in re-starting its
conversion program.
``They have talked in a way as if the Iranian nation was
suffering from backwardness and the time was 100 years ago and
our country was their colony,'' IRNA cited the Iranian president
as saying.
``This process is aimed to normalize a relationship that has
been strained for the last quarter century,'' ElBaradei said.
``It will take time to build confidence, first with Europe and
eventually with the United States.''
Relations between the U.S. and Iran deteriorated in 1979
after students stormed the American embassy in Tehran, holding 52
people hostage for 444 days. In 1995, President Bill Clinton
banned U.S. companies and their foreign subsidiaries from
conducting business with Iran.
The U.S. can unilaterally impose sanctions on foreign
companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran under
the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. The law has never been
enforced.