IRAN - Sept. 12 - IAEA Gives Tehran Till End-Oct.

The IAEA's Governing Board gives Tehran until end-October to provide the information and access necessary to prove that it is not diverting nuclear material to weapons production. The board's resolution draws an angry protest from Iran, whose chief delegate Ali Akbar Salehi walks out of the meeting saying Tehran has no choice but "to have a deep review of our existing level and extent of engagement with the agency". (The resolution, passed after heated negotiations at a week-long meeting in Vienna, reflected growing concern over Iran's nuclear activities following an inspectors' report that found traces of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium in samples taken at a nuclear site. Failure to comply with the resolution would lead to the dispute being referred to the UN Security Council when the board considers the matter again in November. The strongly worded decision was a compromise between an initially more hardline US draft and a more moderate approach advocated by other Western states on the 35-member board. European delegates, though sharing US concerns, wanted to give Iran a last chance to comply with IAEA obligations and have been eager to avoid provoking a North Korean-style withdrawal of Iran from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Delegates realised the resolution could harden Tehran's attitude but that the questions raised by the report and Iran's uneven co-operation with the IAEA required a strong message. One diplomat was quoted as saying: "We'll have to see what the Iranians do: they've been threatening all week to stop their co-operation. But given that they already say they have been complying, if they are sincere they should have no problem fulfilling the demands of the resolution"). The resolution calls on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. It demands that Iran provide by end-October a full declaration of all imported material and components relevant to the enrichment programme; grant unrestricted access, including environmental sampling, for inspectors; and provide complete data on the conduct of uranium conversion experiments. It also requests that Iran "promptly and unconditionally" sign and implement the additional protocol allowing for unfettered inspections of facilities.