UN Nuclear inspectors have found traces of highly enriched uranium in Iran, of a purity reserved for use in a nuclear bomb, European and US diplomats said. Among traces that inspectors detected are some refined to 90 per cent of the rare 235 isotope, diplomats said. While the IAEA has reported finding ‘‘weapons grade’’ traces, it has not revealed that some reached such a high degree of enrichment.The presence of such traces raises the stakes in the international debate over Iran’s nuclear programme and increases the urgency of determining the uranium’s origin. If the enrichment took place in Iran, it means the country is much further along the road to becoming a nuclear weapons power than even the most aggressive intelligence estimates previously anticipated.The IAEA is expected to vote on Friday on a resolution criticising Iran for lack of candor about its nuclear efforts.Iran has said that all of the highly enriched uranium found on its nuclear facilities was contamination that occurred before imported equipment arrived in the country. Iranian officials said they cannot identify the origin of the contamination because the equipment was imported through middlemen in five countries. IAEA officials said contamination may have originated in Pakistan. A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist, has admitted secretly supplying uranium enrichment equipment to Iran and other countries. The agency has asked Pakistan for permission to take environmental samples from its enrichment facilities to see if they match the weapons-grade traces in Iran. ‘‘Pakistan could let Iran off the IAEA hook,’’ said a European diplomat here.US officials argue that traces of such highly enriched uranium, regardless of their origin, are yet another disturbing clue to what they believe are Iran’s hidden ends. ‘‘What it shows is that they have a system that is capable of producing weapons grade uranium,’’ said a US official in Washington. On Wednesday Iran’s Defence Minister, Ali Shamkhani, acknowledged for the first time that the military had produced centrifuges to enrich uranium. He said they were manufacturing unsophisticated models for civilian uses. The admission came after the IAEA presented Iran with evidence that some of its nuclear activities were taking place on military bases, US officials said.US officials are lobbying hard to keep international pressure on Iran.An IAEA resolution on Libya, passed by the agency’s board of governors on Wednesday, is part of that campaign. The resolution, whose language was negotiated by the US, Britain and Libya in London last week, praises the country for swift action in dismantling the nuclear weapons programme discovered last year. But the resolution’s key paragraph calls for the agency to report Libya’s past breaches of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to the Security Council.Iran warned on Wednesday that continued US-led criticism could ‘‘complicate’’ its relations with the IAEA. ‘‘America is taking advantage of any opportunity to put pressure on Iran,’’ Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in Tehran on Wednesday. ‘‘Unfortunately the IAEA is sometimes influenced in this regard,’’ he said. — (NYT)
