U.N. nuclear inspectors have detected traces of enriched uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility south of Tehran, a finding that intensified concerns that Iran is secretly pursuing technologies that could produce nuclear weapons, Western diplomatic sources and weapons experts said yesterday.
The enriched uranium was discovered in environmental samples taken at a nuclear complex near the town of Natanz, where the Iranian government is constructing a massive uranium processing plant that could someday produce fuel for commercial power plants -- or, potentially, for weapons.
Iran has denied producing enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons. The discovery of such material in Iran, if confirmed, would suggest at minimum a serious breach by Iran of its agreements under the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
...
Weapons experts who have monitored Iran's rapidly growing nuclear program described the development as serious and troubling. Some, noting that the Natanz facility had not yet begun processing uranium, said the enriched material likely was brought in inadvertently from elsewhere -- perhaps on equipment that had been used in a still-secret enrichment facility in another location.
"This would appear to confirm that the Iranian program has advanced to a very serious stage," said Leonard S. Spector, a former top nonproliferation official at the Energy Department and now deputy director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "Just as with North Korea, time is running out for us to find a way to slow this process down."
Even if Iran produces a more innocent explanation for the uranium, weapons experts agreed that the discovery will only increase pressure on the Islamic republic to make its nuclear program fully transparent. "Iran has a responsibility to try to explain this, quickly," said one European-based nuclear weapons expert. "People are going to judge Iran by its level of cooperation in the next few weeks."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14030-2003Jul18.html
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