Iran's uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is a long way from producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts, according to a confidential UN nuclear watchdog report.
A senior Iranian nuclear official praised the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) report and said it showed US suspicions about Teheran's nuclear intentions were "baseless".
Officials familiar with the report said the IAEA would be able to open future inquiries into Iranian atomic activity if new suspicions arose, even after Teheran answers questions about the program under a transparency deal reached this month.
Western leaders suspect Iran wants to build atom bombs rather than generate electricity and were alarmed when Teheran announced in April it had reached "industrial capacity" to enrich uranium.
But the IAEA report said Teheran remained far short of that threshold. Iran had just under 2,000 centrifuges divided into 12 cascades, or interlinked units, of 164 machines each refining uranium at its underground Natanz plant as of August 19, it said.
A 13th cascade was being run test-run empty, another was stationary undergoing tests under vacuum and two more cascades were being assembled, said the report, sent to the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors and UN Security Council members.
"Iran made a fast start but then there was a levelling-off," said a senior UN official versed in the IAEA's findings.
"We don't know the reasons, but the slow pace continues. They have brought (just) two new cascades on line since early June and that is not too much," he said.
The report countered impressions gleaned by Western diplomats from the August 21 pact that Iran had negotiated immunity to further IAEA investigations after existing issues were resolved, which officials hoped would happen by year-end.
The report said the level of enrichment of the fissile element in uranium found in samples taken at Natanz by IAEA inspectors was below that reported by Iran - 3.7 percent instead of 4.8 percent.
Five percent is regarded as the ceiling for fuel suited to operating nuclear energy plants, while weapons-grade uranium would require at least 80 percent enrichment.
The official said it remained unclear whether Iran's halting enrichment progress was due to technical problems or political restraint designed to blunt a US push for more painful UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
"But there are not a huge number of breakdowns. They know something about this (difficult technological) process by now."
The report also recapped the phased plan Iran agreed with the IAEA 10 days ago to resolve questions about the scope of its nuclear activity. It detailed how the IAEA had settled one issue already - past small-scale experiments with plutonium.
But the report made clear the cooperation pact by itself was not enough to give Teheran a clean bill of health.
As long as Iran refused to resume allowing wider-ranging, inspections of sites not declared to be nuclear, under the IAEA's Additional Protocol, the agency would be unable to verify Iran had no secret military nuclear facility somewhere.
"Iran would need to continue to build confidence about the scope and nature of its present and future nuclear program. Confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of (this)..., the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities, (requires) implementation of the Additional Protocol."
UN officials also said Iran did not seek in negotiations on the plan to condition its implementation on no tough sanctions by the United Nations Security Council, although Iranian leaders have raised such a linkage in public statements.
That raised Western concerns Iran has no intent to answer thornier questions and may drag matters out indefinitely. The UN has already imposed two sets of sanctions on Iran.
Source; China Daily/Agencies
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