WASHINGTON, March 9: Two senior US officials expressed concern on Sunday about Iran’s nuclear programme and said the United States has urged the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog agency to take a closer look at it.
Time magazine, in its latest edition, reported that Iran had moved closer to operation
of a plant to enrich uranium than it had previously revealed.
While he did not specifically comment on the report, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the International Atomic Energy Agency had been surprised by the extent of Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
“Right now, the IAEA is discovering, as a result of information that intelligence made available, that Iran has a far more robust programme for the development of nuclear weapons than the International Atomic Energy Agency thought,” Mr Powell told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on ABC’s “This Week” that the US had talked to Russia, China and the IAEA “about the need to get into Iran and to understand what is going on there.”—Reuters
