Negotiations over the future of Iran's nuclear program represent a chance to resolve the dispute, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, said today, Bloomberg reported.
"This is a unique and fleeting opportunity to reverse course from confrontation to cooperation and should therefore not be missed," ElBaradei said in his final report to the UN General Assembly before leaving the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency after 10 years as director-general.
In Morocco, where she is attending an Arab forum, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Iran has a "pivotal moment" to accept an international proposal related to uranium enrichment.
The U.S. and its European allies want to ensure that Iran isn't trying to obtain the means to make a nuclear weapon. The Iranian government says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
ElBaradei said a "number of questions and allegations relevant to the nature of that program are still outstanding and need to be clarified." He urged the government in Tehran to respond "soon" to the U.S., Russian and French proposal to process Iran's enriched uranium to fuel for a Tehran medical research reactor.
The Western nations are using the IAEA as a "political instrument for their short-term interests," Mohammad Khazaee, Iran's ambassador to the UN, told the General Assembly. He expressed concern that the U.S. and its allies would "degrade" the agency by turning it into a "verification tool only," while ignoring what he described as Israel's development of nuclear weapons.
Iran wants to buy nuclear material to run a research reactor in Tehran, the nation's envoy to the IAEA, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said today.
Soltanieh's comment may indicate that the option of purchasing fuel from abroad is Iran's response to the IAEA proposal. Buying the fuel is Iran's preference instead of sending its nuclear stockpile to another country for further enrichment, Alaeddin Borujerdi, head of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said last month.
The proposal followed IAEA-brokered talks between Iran and the U.S., Russia and France on refueling the reactor.
Uranium enrichment is at the center of world powers' concern over Iran's nuclear program. The material can fuel a reactor or, enriched to a higher degree, form the core of a bomb.
"Addressing the concerns of the international community about Iran's future intentions is primarily a matter of confidence-building, which can only be achieved through dialogue," ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei said he regretted the "tragic war" that the U.S. launched in Iraq in 2003 "on the basis of a false pretext" that former dictator Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. He noted that the IAEA had reported to the UN Security Council before the war that there was no evidence Iraq had a nuclear program.
"Important lessons must be learned," ElBaradei said. "It gives me no consolation that the agency's findings were subsequently vindicated."
ElBaradei said North Korea's development of nuclear weapons after "on-again, off-again" dialogue demonstrates the need to let "diplomacy through verification" proceed, "however lengthy and tiresome the process might be."
He praised President Barack Obama's "courageous initiative" of calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and resumption of disarmament talks with Russia.
ElBaradei warned of "scores" of mostly developing nations creating nuclear programs in coming years and the threat that terrorist groups might acquire nuclear arms. There were more than 200 cases of illicit trafficking in nuclear materials last year, which may be "only the tip of the iceberg," he said.
Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano will become the IAEA director-general on Dec. 1.