November 5, 2003	Wednesday	Ramazan 9, 1424

VIENNA, Nov 4: The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, will report that Iran has failed to honour some international nuclear safeguards, at a key meeting later this month, the director was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that new breaches will be detailed in a report that the IAEA is to present to its board of governors on Nov 20.

“We reported breaches in the past and there will be new ones in this upcoming report,” Mr ElBaradei was quoted by his spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky, as saying.

It was the first confirmation by the IAEA that new Iranian information, filed ahead of the Oct 31 deadline for Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons, showed Iranian failures in honouring nuclear safeguards agreements.

Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, had said last week that there were disclosures in the report of “what could be considered failures” to adhere to the safeguards regime of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory.

He said these were “in the same line” as failures by Iran the IAEA had listed in a report in June.

Mr Salehi said the new failures involved “some lab tests”, but he did not provide details.

The United States accuses Iran of secretly working to manufacture highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make atomic bombs, and says Tehran should be judged in non-compliance with the NPT regime, something which would oblige the IAEA to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council.

The IAEA board of governors is to meet on Nov 20 to judge Iranian compliance.

Mr Salehi said the failures were “not significant, not of importance but we felt we had to reveal it anyway” in order to answer the IAEA’s questions about its nuclear activities.

“It is 100-percent clear that Iran has never been involved in anything that would indicate it was involved in a nuclear weapons programme,” Mr Salehi said. —AFP