In a strongly worded keynote speech on Monday, Britain's foreign secretary Jack Straw said that aside from the "current impasse" triggered by Iran's nuclear programme and its damaging confrontational stance towards the international community, it is "uneconomic" for the country to enrich uranium on a small scale, as it has just one nuclear power reactor. In the speech, given at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Straw called for the west to increase its engagement with the whole of Iranian society, especially young people. "Iran and the Iranian people deserve better," he said.
London, 13 March (AKI) - In a strongly worded keynote speech on Monday, Britain's foreign secretary Jack Straw said that aside from the "current impasse" triggered by Iran's nuclear programme and its damaging confrontational stance towards the international community, it is "uneconomic" for the country to enrich uranium on a small scale, as it has just one nuclear power reactor. In the speech, given at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Straw called for the west to increase its engagement with the whole of Iranian society, especially young people. "Iran and the Iranian people deserve better," he said.
Iran has only one nuclear power reactor, Straw noted, that is currently under construction at the Iranian port city of Bushehr.
"The point is this. Most countries in the world with only a few operating nuclear power reactors do not find it makes economic sense to develop costly conversion and enrichment facilities," Straw noted.
The international community does not wish to prevent Iran from generating electricity through nuclear power, "as the Iranian government is trying to suggest to its people," Straw said.
Proposals that Britain, France and German made to Iran on behalf of the European Union last year called for "the development of a safe, economically viable and proliferation-proof civil nuclear power generation and research programme," Straw noted, adding: "[US] President Bush has also said that the supports Iran's rights to civil nuclear power.
"The core issue is one of international confidence in respect of Iran's nuclear ambitions overall," Straw stated. "Our concerns are twofold," he said, pointing out first that Iran has sought to conceal the exact extent of its nuclear activities, citing the most recent report of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBaradei, which concluded that "the Agency (IAEA) is still not in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran."
"The second – and equally powerful – reason for our concern is the nature of the Iranian nuclear programme itself," Straw continued. "Iran has no civil operational need for the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan nor for the enrichment facility at Natanz, which are at the centre of the current stand-off," he stressed.
"Iran claims that the sole function of these facilities is as part of the production process for nuclear reactor fuel. But Iran has only one nuclear power reactor... The Russian, in any event have contracted to supply fuel to Bushehr for ten years; and have offered to supply it for the lifetime of the reactor if the Iranians want that," Straw noted.
Tehran said on Monday it was still open to persuing a Russian compromise solution to its nuclear dispute with the West, under which Russia would enrich uranium for Iran. However, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, quoted by Russia's RIA news agency said: "Iran is absolutely no help to those who want to find peaceful ways to solve this problem."
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week ended it discussions on Iran's nuclear programme without agreement, a move that automatically sent the file to the UN Security Council, which is expected to discuss the topic this week.
