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West urged to support IAEA plan on Iran's nuclear program

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Sept 19, IRNA
Iran Nuclear-IAEA
An independent transatlantic research organisation Wednesday urged western countries to support last month's IAEA agreement with Iran to clear up outstanding issues over the country's civilian nuclear prgram.

"Rather than throwing stones, French, British and US officials in nuclear glass houses should be rallying behind Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA-Iran 'work plan'," the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) said.

"It is the best route for verifying a credible, fair and peaceful resolution of this crisis," Basic's co-executive director Ian Davis said in a letter to the Guardian newspaper.

Davis criticized recent belligerent threats made by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, saying that his country's authority to press its arguments was "undermined by its own nuclear doctrine." "France treats nuclear deterrence as an indispensable and legitimate instrument of its own security policy, refuses to rule out pre-emptive nuclear strikes and is implementing planned long-term modernisation of its nuclear arsenal (in contravention of disarmament commitments under the non-proliferation treaty)," he said.

In a separate letter to the Guardian, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) criticized the way the US tried to personally attack the IAEA secretary general to distract from last month's agreement on a work plan with Iran.

"The Bush administration's disparaging of Mohamed ElBaradei is an attempt to discredit the IAEA's report and its agreement with Iran aimed at resolving the standoff over Tehran's nuclear programme," said CASMII spokesman Stefan Simanowitz.

Simanowitz confirmed that last week's IAEA report found "no evidence of diversion of Iranian nuclear materials to non-peaceful use."
"The US, France and Britain may try to dismiss the evidence of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA as an attempt to distract from its real intention to develop nuclear weapons," he said.

"But the IAEA is the only international authority qualified to study Iran's nuclear dossier and the views of its director should not be ignored," his letter warned.

It said it was "fatuous" of the US to accuse ElBaradei of straying into politics. "His role as head of the IAEA is an inherently political one and, arguably, upon his success or failure depends on the peaceful future of the entire Middle East," it said.

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