President Khatami said on Wednesday that Islamic government will honor its commitment to suspend uranium enrichment, but will continue work on completing the centrifuge equipment which will eventually be used for enriching uranium. “Technical work such as building and assembling centrifuges is for executive organizations to do. There is no impediment to doing this work,” President Mohammad Khatami said on Wednesday during an impromptu press conference after a weekly cabinet meeting.
His comments were the closest to an acknowledgment that Iran has resumed building centrifuges after saying in June it would do so within days.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani said Iran restarted building centrifuges on June 29, but the announcement was not aired over concerns for international reaction, according to an unnamed source in the state radio-TV monopoly quoted by the Associated Press.
Under international pressure, Iran suspended uranium enrichment in October 2003, and agreed to sign the additional protocol to the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allowed for more stringent inspections of the country’s nuclear sites by International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors. The pledge was part of the deal with foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, which included the promise of European help to Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program.
“We are not committed any longer to the promise to expand the suspension to include building centrifuges because they (Britain, Germany and France) failed to keep their promise of closing Iran’s dossier (at the IAEA),” Khatami said, referring to a strongly worded rebuke from the IAEA board of governors last month, which called for the IAEA to continue monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities and asked Iran for greater cooperation.
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