19 May 2004	Wednesday	28 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

VIENNA, May 18: The UN atomic agency will not be able to complete an investigation into Iran's alleged secret nuclear weapons programme by mid-June due to delays by Tehran in allowing international inspections and disclosing its nuclear activities, diplomats said on Tuesday.

"This is ironic since the Iranians are the ones who want the file on them to be closed," a diplomat close to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.

During a visit by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to Tehran last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi had said Tehran expected the IAEA probe to be completed next month before a meeting of the IAEA board. But an earlier delay to a crucial round on inspections in March "threw us out of sequence", an official close to the IAEA said, adding key results would not now be available for the board of governors meeting in Vienna on June 14.

"It takes a long time to get analysis of environmental samples (swipes to find traces of radioactive particles) so there is no way to get results in June in order to wrap this thing up," a Western diplomat said.

The Iranians have "succeeded in slowing down the (investigation) machine", a second Western diplomat said. Mr ElBaradei has said he hopes the IAEA can finish its investigation by the end of the year, but he warned in a CNN interview on Saturday that Iran's cooperation so far had been insufficient.

"The jury is still out," he said about whether Iran's nuclear programme is peaceful, as Tehran has insisted. Iran's ambassador to the IAEA said he thought the agency could "normalize" the Iran dossier "due to our very good cooperation with the IAEA and fruitful results coming out of this cooperation".

"Normalize does not mean they have to cancel inspections . . . It means there won't be the need anymore for Iran to be on the (IAEA) agenda as a special case," the ambassador said.

Iran delayed inspections after the IAEA board in March condemned the country for failing to report key activities, particularly its acquiring of blueprints for sophisticated centrifuges to enrich uranium, which can be used in both civilian reactors and to make atomic bombs.

Iran had also failed in a report filed in October to fully disclose, as it had promised, its nuclear activities. One diplomat said that while the international community may tolerate a lack of resolution on Iran's nuclear programme until the US presidential elections in November, the issue "cannot go on forever. We are not going to debate on this for the next three years".

Diplomats were wary of speculating about whether Washington was backing off from pushing for the IAEA to take Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear programme due to the Iraq conflict.

Washington, which charges Tehran is hiding attempts to make nuclear weapons, did not lobby for this at the last IAEA meeting in March and is not expected to insist on it next month. A diplomat said one thing sure was that "the Iranians are more confident because they know they're needed in Iraq". -AFP