. Medical and Hospital News .




.
NUKEWARS
Iran, UN nuclear watchdog meeting fails
by Staff Writers
Vienna (AFP) Aug 24, 2012

Netanyahu says Iran speeding up nuclear arms quest
Jerusalem (AFP) Aug 24, 2012 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting US congressman on Friday that Iran was speeding up its quest for nuclear weapons in defiance of international sanctions.

"Just yesterday, we received additional proof of the fact that Iran is continuing to make accelerated progress toward achieving nuclear weapons while totally ignoring international demands," Netanyahu's office quoted him as telling Republican Congressman Mike Rogers.

Netanyahu was referring to a story in Thursday's Washington Post that cited "diplomats and experts" as saying a forthcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report would show Tehran had installed hundreds of new centrifuges "and may also be speeding up production of nuclear fuel."

Netanyahu's comments came as IAEA and Iranian officials met on Friday at the Iranian mission in Vienna to discuss what the agency called "outstanding issues" over Tehran's contested nuclear drive.

Israel and its ally, the United States, accuse Iran of seeking to develop an atomic arsenal but Tehran insists its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes.

Widely suspected to have the region's sole, if undeclared, nuclear arsenal, Israel has warned that if need be it will attack nuclear facilities in the Islamic republic to prevent it becoming capable of producing nuclear weapons.

US lawmaker wants action on Iran skirting sanctions
Washington (AFP) Aug 24, 2012 - A senior US lawmaker called for diplomatic repercussions on Washington's ties with Iraq and Afghanistan if the countries do not cooperate on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asked Pentagon chief Leon Panetta and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to detail what measures are being taken to prevent Tehran's efforts to bypass sanctions through financial dealings brokered by Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The Iranian regime is trying to access the financial sectors of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the energy sector of Iraq, to provide Tehran with crucial foreign currency reserves at a time when sanctions are having an effect," Ros-Lehtinen wrote in a letter to Panetta and Geithner.

Iran faces economic sanctions from the international community over a nuclear program the West suspects is aimed at developing arms, although Tehran denies the charge, saying it serves to produce energy for non-military purposes.

The New York Times reported last week that Iraq has illegally shipped oil to the Islamic Republic and that Tehran has been allowed to participate in currency trading operations in daily auctions at an Iraqi bank.

Baghdad has denied the claims.

In Afghanistan, "Kabul and Kandahar are now reportedly being utilized as financial centers through which the Iranian regime can circumvent sanctions," Ros-Lehtinen said.

"Given the US investment of blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is vital that the Iraqi and Afghan governments cooperate with the US and other responsible nations to address the Iranian threat."

She warned that if Baghdad and Kabul to do not cooperate, bilateral security arrangements with the countries should be reconsidered.

"Failure to cooperate should be met with a reconsideration of bilateral security arrangements," Ros-Lehtinen wrote.


The UN atomic watchdog said that "intensive" talks Friday with Iran had failed, with no plans for a follow-up meeting to persuade Tehran to address suspected evidence of nuclear weapons research.

"Discussions today were intensive, but important differences remain between Iran and the agency that prevented agreement," International Atomic Energy Agency chief inspector Herman Nackaerts said after the talks in Vienna.

"At the moment we have no plans for another meeting," he told reporters.

Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, however was more positive, saying that some progress had been made and that more talks would take place, although he too conceded that "differences" remained.

The meeting, the first since June and the latest in a series this year, comes as Iran faces unprecedented sanctions over its nuclear work and amid heightened speculation that Israel may bomb its arch foe's nuclear facilities.

It also came a week before the expected release of the IAEA's latest quarterly report on Iran which is expected to show that Tehran is continuing to expand its nuclear programme despite the international pressure.

Parallel, higher-level negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 -- the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany -- meanwhile appear deadlocked after three high-profile but fruitless gatherings since April.

"Issues related to the national security of a (IAEA) member state is something very delicate," Soltanieh told journalists after the more than seven-hour parley at Iran's Vienna embassy.

"I have to say that we are moving forward and this meeting in fact was an indication that we can work with the agency closely and we are going to continue this process."

As a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty -- unlike Israel, the Middle East's only if undeclared state with the bomb -- Iran's nuclear facilities are under constant IAEA surveillance and are subject to frequent inspections.

But the IAEA also wants Iran to explain indications that until at least 2003, and possibly since, Tehran carried out "activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device".

It wants access to specific documents and to scientists involved in Iran's programme, as well as to sites, including the Parchin military base near Tehran, which it visited twice in 2005 but wants to look at again.

So far Iran has flatly rejected the claims, set out in a major IAEA report last November, saying they are based on forged documentation, and denied seeking -- or ever having sought -- to develop atomic weapons.

"Any information that says that Iran has nuclear weapons activities is 100 percent false and fabricated," Soltanieh told AFP after Friday's talks.

"We are at the same time ready -- and that is why we are negotiating a framework -- to work with the agency to prove it to the whole world."

Iran has said it will allow monitors access only as part of a wider arrangement governing relations between Iran and the watchdog, which experts and diplomats say would limit to an unacceptable degree the IAEA's inspection rights.

Western countries have accused Iran of bulldozing parts of Parchin to remove evidence, and the IAEA said in May that activities spotted there by satellite "could hamper the agency's ability to undertake effective verification."

One Western diplomat said they expected the IAEA to say in its report next week that Parchin has been altered so much that inspecting it now would be "irrelevant and academic."

He and other envoys think the IAEA report will say that Iran has installed but is not yet operating several hundred new centrifuges to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity at Fordo, adding to the 1,000 or so already in place there.

Enriched uranium is the main concern of the international community because it can be used not only in power generation and for medical isotopes but also, when purified to 90 percent, in the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.

The Fordo site is dug into a mountain near the holy city of Qom, making it difficult to bomb, and Iran has said it will house 3,000 centrifuges. It also has around 10,000 at its Natanz facility, to produce mostly low-enriched uranium.

Related Links
Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com
Learn about missile defense at SpaceWar.com
All about missiles at SpaceWar.com
Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com




.
.
Get Our Free Newsletters Via Email
...
Buy Advertising Editorial Enquiries


IAEA may say pointless to inspect Iranian base: diplomats
Vienna (AFP) Aug 25, 2012 - Iran has "sanitized" to such an extent a military base where nuclear weapons research allegedly took place that the UN atomic watchdog may say next week there is now little point inspecting it, Western diplomats told AFP.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been pushing Iran to allow access to Parchin, most recently at a failed meeting in Vienna on Friday, where it suspects explosives testing consistent with nuclear bomb research occurred.

Iran, subject to unprecedented Western sanctions and amid heightened speculation of Israeli military action, denies seeking or ever having sought nuclear weapons but has so far blocked the IAEA's requests to see the site.

Western nations have accused Iran of bulldozing parts of the sprawling base near Tehran and the IAEA said in May that activities spotted there by satellite "could hamper the agency's ability to undertake effective verification."

On August 1 US think-tank the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) published open-source satellite images showing "what appears to be the final result of considerable sanitization and earth displacement activity."

New ISIS images Friday on its website (http://isis-online.org/) showed a building suspected of housing the explosive experiments covered in pink tarpaulin in what Western diplomats said was an attempt to hide activity from satellites.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, has called accusations of a clean-up at Parchin "a childish, ridiculous story made out of nothing."

One Western diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity on Friday that the IAEA is so frustrated that in its next quarterly report on Iran, expected next week, it may say that going to Parchin now would serve little purpose.

"I would expect language in the report saying 'you are clearly sanitizing, the satellite imagery shows that, and frankly once you let us in, you have done so much it is going to be irrelevant, academic'," the envoy said.

A second Western diplomat told AFP on Saturday that the IAEA saying something along those lines "is certainly something that would make sense, although we don't know definitively how they are going to characterise it in their report."

"We think any value of a visit to Parchin now is greatly diminished," the envoy said on condition of anonymity.

The first diplomat also said that as a result, and after Friday's fruitless meeting, Western nations might table a resolution sharply criticising Tehran at the next IAEA board of governors' meeting starting September 10.

"We are getting nowhere swiftly ... We need to make a more formal and public example of the failure of the sides to engage, which is Iran's fault," he said, adding however it was unclear whether Russia and China would support such a move.

IAEA inspectors visited Parchin twice in 2005 but want to look at it again after new information came to light.

Although analysts say other sites are more significant, the IAEA has zeroed in on Parchin because its information on the site, unlike on others, is its own and not from foreign intelligence services.

Iran has said it will allow monitors access only as part of a wider arrangement governing relations between Iran and the watchdog, which experts and diplomats say would limit to an unacceptable degree the IAEA's inspection rights.

The IAEA report next week is also expected to say that despite the pressure, Tehran is continuing to expand its programme by installing several hundred new centrifuges in its Fordo plant, dug into a mountain so difficult to bomb.



.

. Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle



NUKEWARS
Outside View: Chains on Iranian dissidents
London (UPI) Aug 22, 2012
Ever since the United Nations brokered a deal with the Iraqi government regarding the 3,400 Iranian dissidents at Camp Ashraf north of Baghdad, the situation has been one of give and take - the dissidents giving and the Iraqis taking. The original plan had been to transfer the members of the People's Mujahedin of Iran to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. Army base closer to Baghdad, where th ... read more


NUKEWARS
China bridge collapse kills three

Green Climate Fund to hold next meeting in South Korea

Tanker-bus crash inferno kills 36 in China

Haiti demolishes quake-ruined presidential palace

NUKEWARS
A GPS in Your DNA

Next Galileo satellite reaches French Guiana launch site

Raytheon completes GPS OCX iteration 1.4 Critical Design Review

Mission accomplished, GIOVE-B heads into deserved retirement

NUKEWARS
Man mistakes son for monkey, shoots him dead

More Clues About Why Chimps and Humans Are Genetically Different

More sophisticated wiring, not just bigger brain, helped humans evolve beyond chimps

Once again with feeling: Australian science tugs heart-strings

NUKEWARS
Cambodia creates safe zones for Mekong dolphins

Losing stream in our battle to predict and prevent invasive species

Nematodes with Pest-Fighting Potential Identified

'Pandamania' bears take rocky French road to parenthood

NUKEWARS
Mexico destroys 8 mn chickens amid bird flu outbreak

Clinton signs new deal to fight AIDS in South Africa

Malawi to test 250,000 people for HIV in one week

New bat virus could hold key to Hendra virus

NUKEWARS
China's single women compete for love and riches

Tibetan monk tortured and imprisoned: rights group

Dissenters locked in China mental hospitals: rights group

China stamps down on Gu 'body-double' rumours

NUKEWARS
EU-NATO forces free hijacked vessel

Nigeria intensifies search for 4 kidnapped foreigners: navy

Somali pirates release Taiwan fishing boat

ONR Sensor and Software Suite Hunts Down More Than 600 Suspect Boats

NUKEWARS
EU ponders how to hold off on Greek pleas

Hong Kong apartment fetches record $61 million

China manufacturing hits nine-month low: HSBC

Japan trade deficit shows world economy 'serious'


Memory Foam Mattress Review

Newsletters :: SpaceDaily Express :: SpaceWar Express :: TerraDaily Express :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

.

The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2012 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement