June 3, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1424

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TEHRAN, June 2: Iran on Monday rejected mounting international calls for it to sign an additional protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that would allow tougher inspections of its suspect nuclear programme.

The refusal came after Russia, which is helping the Islamic republic build its first atomic power plant in Bushehr in southern Iran, joined calls for Tehran to grant International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors full access to its nuclear facilities.

A string of nations, including Britain, France and Australia, have urged Iran to take what they call a badly-needed “confidence building” step that would ease jitters in Washington that the Islamic republic could go nuclear.

Iran has been clearly warned that crossing the nuclear weapons threshold would be “unacceptable”, while its plea that the programme is exclusively civil have failed to convince.

“If the Russians are worried, we are ready to discuss this with them,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, the day after Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov joined calls for Iran to show greater transparency.

“The question of sanctions has to be resolved first. We will not sign any other international accord while the West does not respect its obligations outlined by the NPT, and does not help us with (peaceful) nuclear technology as the NPT obliges them to,” he added.

Iran, a signatory of the NPT, is currently only subject to IAEA inspections of declared sites. But the country has consistently argued that it has no obligation to grant more powers to the IAEA when other signatories are refusing to meet their NPT obligations related to the transfer of civil nuclear technology.

Russia is also coming under almost daily pressure from the United States to halt its multi-billion dollar nuclear cooperation with Iran, a country lumped into an “axis of evil” by US President George W. Bush.

But Mr Asefi said that Moscow “has commitments with us that it has to respect”.

As for US concerns, Mr Asefi brushed them off as “pretexts”.

“The United States is not really worried about what they call weapons of mass destruction or our nuclear programme. These are just pretexts: if they are worried, all they have to do is come here and help us build our nuclear power stations,” he said.

And Mr Asefi dismissed the argument that Iran had no need for nuclear power, given its massive oil and gas reserves — a logic given by the United States as a clear indication that the atomic energy programme here is just a convenient cover.

“It was the United States that proposed to the former regime (of the Shah) to build nuclear power plants,” Mr Asefi said.

But diplomats here say the pressure that Iran now find itself under is only likely to increase over the coming months. A key test will be a mid-June report on Iran’s programme by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

AL QAEDA: On Al Qaeda issue, Mr Asefi hit back at US allegations that it had failed to crack down on fugitive Al Qaeda members, calling on Washington to apologise to the world for its own past support of the network.

“The Americans should present a full apology to the international community for the support they gave to Al Qaeda.”

The official was referring to a period in the 1980s when millions of dollars of covert US aid was channelled — through the Pakistan secret agencies — to Islamic groups battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Much of the cash went to hardline Mujahedeen groups, which included a network of Arab volunteers — the most prominent of whom was Osama bin Laden. Some of these volunteers later emerged as members of Al Qaeda, a network that took its name from the safe houses set up for Arab volunteers in Peshawar.

The United States was also largely sympathetic — and on some occasions supportive — to the Taliban after the puritanical militia emerged in 1994, and even after the militia gave Osama bin Laden safe haven from 1996.

That often-confused US policy only shifted significantly after the East Africa US embassy bombings of August 1998 blamed on Al Qaeda.

Given the background of Al Qaeda, Mr Asefi reiterated that the network’s “violent ideology is the total opposite of that of the Islamic republic”.

US officials have alleged that Iran-based Al Qaeda operatives were behind the May 12 suicide attacks in Riyadh, and have piled massive pressure on Iran to crack down on the group.

Following the Riyadh blasts, which cost nine US lives, fingers were pointed at Egyptian-born Saif al-Adel, thought to have taken over as Al Qaeda’s number three.

Adel, who is in his late 30s, is also wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Also alleged to have been in Iran is Sulaiman Abu Gaith, a Kuwaiti-born Al Qaeda spokesman, and Saad bin Laden, one of Osama’s eldest sons.

In response, Iran has pointed to its arrest and extradition of hundreds of suspects since the 2001 US attack on Afghanistan, and has also revealed it has a “handful” of Al Qaeda members in its custody.

Mr Asefi said Iran was still in the process of identifying those prisoners, and said he hoped the country “has the means to identify them” without outside assistance.—AFP