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Security Council has ignored IAEA expertise: Iran

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New York, March 4, IRNA
Iran-Security Council-Khazaee
Full implementation of the work plan and closure of the outstanding issues have eliminated the pretexts and allegations on the basis of which Iran's nuclear program was referred to the Security Council, Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaee said in his address to the Security Council.

He said that the Security Council's involvement and the actions it has taken so far in this regard have been unwarranted and
unconstructive and have only damaged the credibility of the IAEA.

Iran's peaceful nuclear program should be dealt with solely by the Agency.

"I wish to draw your attention to this very important point that based on the very last paragraph of the Work Plan, the Agency and Iran agreed that after the implementation of the work plan and the agreed modalities for resolving the outstanding issues, the implementation of safeguards in Iran will be conducted in a routine manner." Therefore, the consideration of Iran's peaceful nuclear program in no way falls within the purview of the Security Council. In fact, based on the IAEA reports and as a result of Iran's cooperation and the closure of the outstanding issues, not only there remains no single reason or shred of legality for any new action by the Council, but also the illegality of the previous actions of the Council have become more abundantly clear.

Much has been said about "suspension". Iran cannot and will not accept a requirement which is legally defective and politically coercive.

History tells us that no amount of pressure, intimidation and threat will be able to coerce our nation to give up its basic and legal rights. We have never attempted to impose our will on others; equally, we will never allow others to impose their unjust demands on us. We do not consider this call for suspension legitimate for, among others, the following reasons:
1. As we have stressed over and over again, no government is prepared to compromise the exercising of the inalienable rights of its nation. Any demand from a nation to do so would be politically incorrect and legally flawed.

2. Neither in the IAEA's Statute nor in the NPT-safeguards, nor even in the Additional Protocol, "enrichment" and "reprocessing" are prohibited or restricted. There is even no limit for the level of enrichment in the said documents.

3. In all resolutions of the Board of Governors of the IAEA, "suspension" was considered as a "non-legally binding, voluntary, and confidence building measure".

4. Suspension was in place for more than two years and the IAEA, in each and every report from November 2003 to February 2006, repeatedly verified that Iran fully suspended what it had agreed to suspend. During this period, it became clear that those insisting on suspension were indeed aiming to prolong and ultimately perpetuate it, and consequently deprive the Iranian nation from exercising its inalienable rights.

5. The attempt to make the suspension mandatory through the Security Council has been, from the outset, against the fundamental principles of international law, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and IAEA Board resolutions. The Security Council resolutions, which made the suspension mandatory, also flout the stated position of the overwhelming majority of the international community.

6. Unquestionably, with resolving the outstanding issues, with the IAEA's repeated conclusions of "non-diversion" in Iran's nuclear activities, and with Iran's nuclear activities under the full and continuous monitoring of the Agency, there remains no pretext for the illegal request for suspension.

7. The Security Council's decision to coerce Iran into suspension of its peaceful nuclear program is also a gross violation of Article 25 of the Charter. While Member States have agreed, in accordance with the said Article, to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the Charter, the Security Council could not coerce countries into submitting either to its decisions taken in bad faith or to its demands negating the fundamental purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

8. We need to enrich uranium to provide fuel for the nuclear reactors that we are either building or planning to build in order to meet the growing needs of our country for energy. There has never been, nor will there ever be, guarantees that our needs for fuel will be completely provided by foreign sources. No country, particularly our nation which has a bitter memory of unilateral termination of valid agreements on the part of foreign countries in this regard, can solely rely on others to provide it with the technology and materials that are becoming so vital for its development and for the welfare of its people. It is worth mentioning that there is no single document as "Legally Binding International Instrument for Assurance of Nuclear Supply" to guarantee the fuel for nuclear power plants. It may be recalled that in 1987, the Committee on Assurances of Supply (CAS) of the IAEA failed, after 7 years of negotiations.

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