3 Countries ID'd As Iran Atomic Providers

[Socialist Christian]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20031120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/nuclear_agency_suppliers


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VIENNA, Austria - The International Atomic Energy Agency has identified Russia, China and Pakistan as probable suppliers of some of the technology Iran used to enrich uranium as part of its suspect nuclear programs, diplomats said Thursday.

The diplomats spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as a key IAEA board meeting discussed how to react to Iran's nuclear activities. While Iran has acknowledged nearly two decades of concealment, it has recently begun cooperating with the agency in response to international pressure.


As part of that cooperation it has suspended uranium enrichment — an activity that the United States had linked to what it says was Iran's nuclear weapons agenda. Iran insists it enriched uranium only to produce power. While acknowledging that some of its enrichment equipment had traces of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, it insists those traces were inadvertently imported on material it purchased abroad.


Iran has said it cannot identify the countries of origin because it bought the centrifuges and laser enrichment equipment through third parties. The IAEA needs to establish where the equipment came from, however, to be able to compare isotope traces in its efforts to verify whether Iran is telling the truth about the source of the traces or whether it enriched uranium to nuclear weapons levels domestically