CROATIA: International suspicion of Iran's nuclear programme heightened yesterday when it was revealed that Tehran had obtained a blueprint showing how to build the core of a nuclear warhead.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told diplomats his inspectors had recently obtained documents from Tehran showing that the Iranians had been given various instructions on processing uranium hexafluoride gas and casting and enriching uranium.
These had been obtained via the black market in nuclear technology headed by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Informed diplomats said the blueprint for casting uranium was required in making the core of a nuclear warhead, although that alone was not enough for the manufacture of a weapon.
UN inspectors had long suspected that the Khan network had helped Iran, but this was the first time the Iranians had come clean on the issue. They told the inspectors they had not sought the information, but that the Khan network had supplied the documents anyway.
This claim stretched credibility among diplomats and nuclear experts and reinforced their conviction that Tehran is determined to acquire the capacity and knowhow for nuclear weapons.
Dr ElBaradei's disclosure came in a five-page confidential report to diplomats, ahead of a meeting of the 35-strong IAEA board on the Iranian dispute next week.
It comes a day after the Guardian newspaper reported that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had conducted a purge of his opponents in key ministries, drawing accusations of a coup.
Iran, meanwhile, displayed further defiance of the IAEA yesterday by announcing it had started processing more uranium for its nuclear programme.
Dr ElBaradei, the recent Nobel peace prizewinner, criticised Iran for continuing to withhold information on the project, demanding access for his inspectors to two Iranian military sites and to personnel involved in the programme.
He reiterated that Iranian "transparency" was "indispensable and overdue". Amid frantic behind-the-scenes diplomacy aimed at building a broader international consensus on how to respond to the Iranian nuclear challenge, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator announced that more uranium ore was being processed into gas for nuclear fuel purposes at the conversion complex in Isfahan.
While the Iranian move was no surprise, its timing was seen as a signal of intransigence, less than a week before the IAEA board session.
In the run-up to next week's Vienna session, the US, Russia, Britain and other main European players have been working with Dr ElBaradei to finalise an offer to the Iranians that would leave them with a civil nuclear power programme but deny them the capacity to manufacture weapons-grade uranium.
Dr Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, has asked Dr ElBaradei to put the proposal to the Iranians, a mission in which, informed diplomats say, the Russians are the linchpin.
US, European, and Russian officials were meeting in London yesterday to discuss the proposals and also to try to come up with a common strategy on Iran.