Iran has admitted that it conducted small-scale experiments to create plutonium, one of the pathways to building nuclear weapons, for five years beyond the date when it previously insisted it had ended all such work, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to report Thursday.In an oral statement to be delivered at a meeting of the IAEA board, the agency’s deputy director, Pierre Goldschmidt, will state that Iran made the admissions after being confronted with the result of laboratory tests conducted on samples collected from an Iranian nuclear site.An Iranian negotiator, Cyrus Nasseri, denied the disclosures indicated any effort by Iran to conceal activities. The IAEA has, however, not charged Iran with building nuclear weapons. —NYT
