Iran Threatens to End Its IAEA Ties

Iran said Wednesday that it would resume uranium enrichment and warned that it might quit cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which it accused of kowtowing to Washington at a meeting in Vienna.

Separately, Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani told reporters that the Iranian military had built nuclear centrifuges for civilian use -- the first time Iran has acknowledged that its military was involved in the country’s nuclear program.

IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei warned that Iran risked undermining its efforts to convince the world that its nuclear intentions are peaceful.

The 35-nation board of governors for the United Nations atomic monitoring agency, based in Vienna, was preparing for a debate today on whether Tehran was living up to its pledge of full transparency in its nuclear program.

The United States, which suspects that Iran is building nuclear arms, wants a draft resolution on Iran to take a tough line because of evidence of secrecy. But Britain, France and Germany want the draft to acknowledge that Iran has taken substantial, if not complete, steps toward openness.

A compromise between the two approaches has yet to be worked out.

Iran’s chief delegate to the IAEA, Pirouz Hosseini, told reporters outside the board of governors meeting that Iran was unhappy with the draft, and accused the United States of putting pressure on the Europeans.

“We have never been involved in any nuclear weapons program ... and the Americans don’t want to accept the fact,” Hosseini said.

In Tehran, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi warned Britain, France and Germany -- whose foreign ministers visited the Iranian capital last year to discuss the nuclear issue -- that his nation would stop cooperating with them if they failed to resist U.S. pressure at the Vienna meeting.

Kharrazi said Iran had a “legitimate right to enrich uranium” to fuel the nuclear reactor it is building to generate electrical power.

Shamkhani said the military industries had produced P-1 centrifuges, which are used for low-grade enrichment, not the P-2 models used for weapons-grade enrichment.