NUCLEAR WEAPONS U.S.: Iran races to beat deadline

Diplomatic overtures to Iran do not appear to be part of the U.S. strategy.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
WASHINGTON -- Iran is racing to produce large amounts of a uranium compound that can be used to make nuclear weapons before a deadline next week to halt all uranium-purification work, U.S. officials said Friday.
The allegation came as the Bush administration said it was standing by Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertion Wednesday that Iran also is working to modify missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
The new allegations could escalate tensions over Iran's nuclear intentions ahead of a meeting Thursday of the International Atomic Energy Agency on the Islamic republic's nuclear activities.
The United States charges Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Washington wants the IAEA to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council for consideration of economic sanctions.
Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear activities are for generating electric power.
Britain, France and Germany are anxious to avert a showdown. If Iran does not halt its reprocessing, it could soon be on a path to acquiring a nuclear arsenal that could threaten Israel and U.S. troops in the Middle East. A nuclear-armed Iran would change the balance of power in the Persian Gulf.
Under an accord reached by the European countries and Iran last week, Iran is to suspend all uranium-purification activities beginning Monday while it negotiates a deal in which it would receive trade incentives and peaceful nuclear technology. In return, it would indefinitely suspend uranium enrichment and related activities, including building centrifuges.
U.S. officials
A State Department official and a senior administration official, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said Iranian technicians were converting uranium ore into substantial quantities of uranium hexaflouride gas before Monday's deadline at a facility in the central city of Isfahan, Iran.
Spun at high speeds in centrifuges, uranium hexafluoride gas can be purified into low-level uranium fuel for nuclear power reactors or into highly enriched uranium for the explosive core of a nuclear weapon.
Diplomatic overtures to Iran do not appear to be part of the U.S. strategy, but Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told the Arab world Friday, "We're talking about resolving this problem by diplomatic means."
"War is obviously not an option that we want to consider if we can help it," Armitage said in an interview on the Al-Jazeera television network.
The State Department official said the United States expected Iranian officials to argue the agreement with the Europeans did not prohibit the conversion of uranium ore into uranium hexaflouride gas.
"Technically, it may not, but it violates the spirit profoundly," the official said. "It's absolutely unacceptable. It's a tremendous show of bad faith by Iran."
The United States plans to discuss the alleged reprocessing with European and IAEA officials next week.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the allegations Iran was converting large amounts of raw uranium ore into uranium hexafluoride gas "only heighten our concerns that Iran continues to pursue nuclear activities and does not honor its commitments."
Ereli also said the United States stood by Powell's contention Iran was working to modify missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
"We believe we are on very, very solid ground in pointing to a clandestine effort by Iran to develop weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems," Ereli said.
Reactions
Iran rejected Powell's charge as "baseless." Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, "There is no place for weapons of mass destruction in Iran's defense doctrine" and urged U.S. officials to "reconsider their intelligence sources."
The State Department official and the senior administration official said U.S. experts were still trying to verify the authenticity of the information.
They said the information had come from a single source. U.S. analysts were treating that source extremely carefully in light of the bogus intelligence from former Iraqi exile groups Powell used in a February 2003 speech to bolster the administration's charges Iraq had illegal weapons programs. No such programs were found after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and American experts have concluded Iraq scrapped its banned-weapons efforts after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
As was the case in Iraq, Iranian exiles eager to overthrow the regime in Tehran have provided U.S. officials with extensive intelligence on Iran's weapons programs and links to terrorism. Some of it has proved accurate, but some of it has proved to be false.