December 15, 2002	Sunday	Shawwal 10, 1423

WASHINGTON: The United States edged closer to confrontation with all three members of President Bush’s “axis of evil” on Friday when US officials accused Iran of secretly developing two nuclear plants which could be used to produce weapons.

Iran denied the charge, pointing out that officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been invited to visit the two sites, near the towns of Arak and Natanz, in February.

An IAEA spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming, said that the head of the agency, Mohamed El-Baradei, will go to Iran in February on a visit initially planned for this week but postponed by Tehran .

The accusation, made to CNN television by unnamed US officials, that Iran was pursuing a secret nuclear programme came the day after North Korea announced it would restart a nuclear power plant that had lain dormant since a non-proliferation deal with the US in 1994.

Meanwhile, the US is poised for war with Iraq, the third member of the “axis of evil” denounced in January by the US president in his State of the Union speech, which is now seen as the launch of the “Bush doctrine” aimed at pre-empting future attacks on the US.

Supporters of the administration have pointed to the prescience of the speech, while critics argue it has in part become a self-fulfilling prophecy by serving to isolate Tehran and Pyongyang.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) published satellite photographs of the Arak and Natanz sites.

Its experts identified Arak as a production plant for “heavy water”, used in a certain type of nuclear power plant that produces plutonium as a by-product. This can then be used in weapons.

Isis said the Natanz site looked like a uranium enrichment plant, complete with centrifuges, which have a civilian use in producing nuclear fuel, but which can also be used to make weapons-grade uranium.

The Iranian government spokesman, Abdollah Ramazanzadeh, denied that anything sinister was going on at the plants. The Natanz plant was used for experiments with radioactivity, he said.

“We don’t have any hidden atomic activities. All our nuclear activities are for non-military fields,” he said. The IAEA said Iran had not violated its agreements, which require opening each facility to inspection six months before any radioactive material is used in them.

The production of heavy water and enriched uranium would make Iran self-sufficient in nuclear fuels, but it could also provide an unlimited supply of weapons.

Isis said in its report: “There is concern that this effort to obtain a complete fuel cycle is aimed at developing the capability to make separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the two main nuclear explosive materials.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.