Fordo atomic site runs under IAEA watch - Gayo Lues

“This site [Fordo] was declared more than two years ago and since then the agency is continuously monitoring… all the activities,” Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Press TV late on Monday.

Soltanieh made the remarks after some Western sources reported the start of enrichment activities in Fordo, located in Qom province, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of capital Tehran, claiming that the work is being done without informing the IAEA.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Iran’s enriching uranium to 20 percent at the Fordo site was “a further escalation of their ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations.”

However, IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that all nuclear material “remains under the Agency’s containment and surveillance” at Fordo.

Soltanieh also rejected France’s claim that the enrichment work at Fordo violates international law, saying that the Islamic Republic needs the 20-percent-enriched uranium for the production of nuclear fuel plates required at the Tehran Research Reactor for producing radioisotopes for cancer treatment.

The French Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday, saying, “This new provocation… leaves us with no other choice but to reinforce international sanctions and to adopt, with our European partners and all willing countries, measures of an intensity and severity without precedent.”

However, Soltanieh highlighted that “Every step we have taken so far and every step we will take in the future has been and will be under the IAEA containment and surveillance,” adding that “now with the 24-hour [surveillance] cameras and inspections, the enrichment activities in Natanz and Fordo are under the control of the IAEA.”

On Sunday, August 21, 2011, head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi, announced the Islamic Republic has started transferring the centrifuges of its Natanz nuclear facility to the Fordo atomic site under the supervision of the IAEA.

The US and its allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have pressured the UN Security Council to impose four rounds of sanctions against the country.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran insists it is entitled to utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

AS/MA

source: Presstv.ir

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