Iran rejects tougher atom checks

GENEVA-Iran on Monday ruled out accepting intrusive nuclear inspections unless there was an end to "double standards" on global non-proliferation that it said benefited nuclear arms powers including Israel.Squaring off with Western nations at a global meeting on proposals to shore up the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran rejected allegations of covert Iranian atom bomb work, and blamed nuclear weapons powers for the treaty's problems.The United States said the example of Iran's "course of deceit, lawbreaking and confrontation" in pursuing secretive uranium enrichment and spurning trade and technology incentives to stop posed the prime threat to the NPT.The hard-nosed exchange reflected political feuding between nuclear "haves" and "have nots" that has frustrated efforts to improve the four-decade-old treaty, up for review in 2010 after preparatory meetings this year and next.Earlier on Monday, Iran spurned a packet of fresh incentives offered by six world powers to coax Tehran into halting the enrichment process which can make fuel for power plants or material for warheads.At the NPT meeting in Geneva, big nuclear powers say that alleged covert attempts by North Korea, Iran and Syria to obtain atom bombs makes it vital that terms for transfers of sensitive nuclear technology are toughened. Developing nations say this would erode their right to the peaceful fruits of nuclear energy, and make it easier for the big powers to avoid scrapping their weapons.Iran asked why developing nations should accept intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections as a condition for obtaining nuclear know-how when nuclear arms powers could unilaterally curb IAEA checks of their facilities.Industrialised powers had enshrined "nuclear apartheid" by imposing harsher export controls for developing states within the NPT while secretly helping non-NPT state Israel build a nuclear arsenal, said Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
"DOUBLE STANDARDS"
"This double standard cannot be sustained and no additional measure in strengthening (IAEA) safeguards can be accepted by non-nuclear weapons parties unless these serious constraints and discrimination are removed," he said.Another condition Iran has previously cited for wider U.N. inspections is an end to U.N. sanctions against it over a programme it says is geared only to generating electricity.Analysts say Israel developed nuclear weapons with Western assistance decades ago to ward off surrounding Arab and Islamic enemies-spearheaded by Iran and Syria today.Almost all NPT members including Iran allow basic IAEA inspections. But more than 100 nations, including the United States and Iran, have not implemented an IAEA system of snap checks ranging beyond declared nuclear sites set up after inspectors detected covert atomic bomb work in Iraq in 1991.The IAEA has called Iran "a special case" for wider ranging inspections, due to its history of nuclear secrecy."While well-documented and expressed, Iran's arguments are perceived by many NPT delegations as playing to the gallery in order to distract and divert attention from the ongoing concerns about Iran's own nuclear programme and ambitions," said disarmament analyst Rebecca Johnson.U.S. delegation chief Christopher Ford said that unless the "crisis of non-proliferation non-compliance" posed by Iran, North Korea-which quit the treaty and then tested a nuclear bomb-and now Syria were defused, the NPT would unravel.Washington two weeks ago said Syria had covertly built a nuclear reactor with North Korean help. Syria denies the U.S. charges, now under IAEA investigation.
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/news/international/Iran_rejects_tougher_atom_checks.html?siteSect=143&sid=9053011&cKey=1210006424000&ty=ti

As in the days of Noah...