Nations Move Closer to Unity on Iran Strategy

World powers appeared close to agreement Tuesday on steps to curb Iran’s nuclear program, as several Western diplomats said they remained concerned about evidence of highly enriched uranium discovered on equipment at a military site.

A united front by the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany would boost the diplomatic effort on Iran, which has foundered in the face of defiance from the Tehran government, which announced in April that it had successfully enriched uranium. Since then, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his surrogates have made almost daily boasts about the country’s nuclear program.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the foreign ministers of Germany and the five permanent council members -- the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China -- are to meet Thursday in Vienna to try to bridge their differences on Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to attend.

President Bush spoke to Russian, French and German leaders Tuesday.

The intensive discussions involve a package of incentives the EU will offer Iran, in exchange for Tehran’s halting of uranium enrichment, providing more access to United Nations inspectors and answering outstanding questions from the inspectors.

Differences remain over the timing of sanctions if Iran refuses.

The Russians and Chinese are reluctant to support sanctions, particularly if they are tied to the EU offer.

The U.S. wants the EU to present its package of incentives at the same time the council approves a resolution authorizing sanctions if Iran fails to comply within 30 days.

Although positions have moved closer in recent discussions, differences apparently remain over crucial legal questions, including which chapter of the U.N. charter would be cited to authorize Iran’s censure and which sanctions would be considered.

Iran has sent mixed signals about its willingness to negotiate. Most recently, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who is traveling in Malaysia, said Iran wanted to resume talks with the EU but would not talk to the United States, wire reports said.

The message from Tehran was less conciliatory. In a speech at Tehran University, Mohammed Saeedi, the deputy nuclear energy chief, cautioned Europeans to “consider irreversible realities” in their offer to Iran, a reference to his country’s successful production of enriched uranium for power plants. Although the amount produced was small, and its enrichment level well below weapons grade, the achievement showed that Iranian engineers were on their way to mastering the technology.

Iran appears to be proceeding with its enrichment program and continues to obscure the extent of its nuclear efforts before 2002, when its previously secret program was disclosed by an opposition group.

Traces of enriched uranium found recently on equipment from the former Physics Research Center at the Lavisan-Shian military site included at least one sample with an enrichment level of 54%, said diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. Other samples had lower levels, officials said.

The origin of the highly enriched uranium is unclear and troubling, diplomats said. Uranium for civilian purposes is typically enriched to 3% to 5%, although it can be enriched to as high as 10%.

The percentage refers to the relative amount of the U-235 uranium isotope, which is what’s needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. Uranium enriched to more than 90% is considered weapons grade.

“Iran certainly still has some explaining to do,” a senior diplomat in Vienna said.

The leading scenario to explain the presence of the highly enriched uranium, which was found on vacuum pumps, is that the traces came from equipment brought into Iran from Pakistan when Tehran was secretly importing centrifuge parts from the black market network of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Such a scenario would imply either that Iran used the vacuum pumps with the contaminated centrifuges in an enrichment experiment at the military site, or that scientists involved in working with the contaminated centrifuges brought the contamination with them to the site. “Contamination can spread very easily,” a diplomat familiar with the issue said.

Either case would implicate the military in uranium enrichment and imply a link to development of a weapon. Such a link, which has been denied by Iran, would violate the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

David Albright, a former weapons inspector who runs the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, described the new findings as “important, because of the connections to the military, which is always something the Iranians have said there weren’t.”

He said the Pakistanis could have sent parts from a dismantled section of a cascade of centrifuges where uranium was enriched to the 54% level. Pakistan has a military nuclear program.

Another, more troubling option is that Iran has a secret, undisclosed military program where it is enriching uranium to high levels. But experts on Iran’s program, diplomats and intelligence sources say it is unlikely the country would have been able to enrich to such high levels on its own.

“The main question is: Why was the contamination on that equipment at Lavisan?” said an official close to the IAEA. “It’s not a smoking gun yet -- they need to do more tests -- but there is no civilian use for 54% enriched uranium except for medical isotopes, and the Iranians haven’t said that was what they needed highly enriched uranium for.”

Albright said the contamination information was part of a trail that connected officials affiliated with Lavisan’s Physics Research Center to nuclear procurement and possibly nuclear experiments.

Whether Lavisan was ever used for nuclear experiments is unknown because shortly before IAEA inspectors visited the vast site in 2004, the buildings and soil were carted away.