Bush won't have time to nation build in Iraq, he and his cabal are already gunning for their next victim.
Iran nukes program 'a surprise'
From correspondents in Washington
March 10, 2003
IRAN has a far stronger nuclear weapons program than earlier thought, US officials said today, following a news report that Tehran was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"I mean, here we suddenly discover that Iran is much further along, with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had," US secretary of state Colin Powell told CNN.
This, he said, "shows you how a determined nation that has the intent to develop a nuclear weapon can keep that development process secret from inspectors and outsiders".
"It does not surprise us at all that Iran has been trying to acquire nuclear weapons and to enrich uranium," US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told ABC.
"It's been couched as a peaceful program. But we've been for a long time one of the lone voices that has said that the Iranians are a problem," she said.
In a clear reference to Iraq, she said this demonstrated the risk of rushing to conclusions about "who is making progress on a nuclear program".
Iran announced last week it intends to activate a uranium conversion facility near the city of Isfahan, a step that produces the uranium hexafluoride gas used in the enrichment process, according to Time.
The magazine said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that Iran actually introduced uranium hexafluoride gas into some centrifuges at an undisclosed location to test their ability to work.
"That would be a blatant violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," Time said.
International weapons inspectors in Iran late last month were shown a network of sophisticated machinery to enrich uranium at a facility near the northwestern city of Natanz.
During the visit, inspectors found a small network of centrifuges for enriching uranium and learned that Iran had components to make a significant number of additional centrifuges.
US officials said at the time Natanz could be part of a long-suspected nuclear weapons program, benefiting from Pakistani assistance and far more advanced than similar efforts made by neighbouring Iraq.
Time magazine quoted diplomatic sources as saying work on the Natanz plant "is extremely advanced" and involves "hundreds" of gas centrifuges ready to produce enriched uranium and "the parts for a thousand others ready for assembly".
Agence France-Presse
news.com.au |
