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Subject:
Russia to Construct Nuclear Plant in Iran
Phoenix Rising
3/27/2002 7:56:33 PM
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MOSCOW - Russia will
complete construction of a
nuclear power plant in Iran
despite U.S. complaints and is
looking at North Korea's tentative
request for a similar plant, the
top Russian nuclear official said
Wednesday.
"Iran has signed all required
international agreements and
undertaken full obligations on
transparency and checks ... and
unfailingly fulfilled them," Nuclear Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said at a
news conference. He added that the Bushehr reactor would be completed by
2005 as planned.
The United States has long urged Russia to abandon a 1995 contract with Iran
to complete a nuclear reactor at Bushehr worth about dlrs 800 million, saying
the project could help Iran build a nuclear bomb. Russia says the reactor could
only be used for civilian purposes and will remain under the supervision of the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
The controversy over Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran and U.S. claims
that Russian companies have leaked missile technologies to Tehran remains a
major irritant in U.S.-Russian relations.
Rumyantsev insisted that the nuclear cooperation with Iran posed no threat of
proliferation. He said that a new law passed by the Russian parliament last year
strengthened non-proliferation guarantees by allowing spent fuel from nuclear
power plants abroad taken back to Russia for reprocessing.
"We will ship nuclear fuel to Iran under the contract which envisages that the
spent fuel will be taken back to Russia," Rumyantsev said. "There has been no
other cooperation that could help Iran build nuclear weapons."
On a conciliatory note, he added that Russia was viewing the U.S. concerns
with "great attention" and voiced hope for a "compromise that would help
strengthen confidence and peace while allowing Russia to reap economic
benefits."
Rumyantsev said Russia would earn about dlrs 500 million a year from a deal
with the United States to sell uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear
weapons.
But he also said that his ministry was looking at tentative request from North
Korea for the construction of a nuclear power plant.
"We are holding discussions and trying to find out whether it would be
economically feasible," he said. "But these are only discussions without any
specific foundation."
Pyongyang has begun looking into whether Russia could do the job after
threatening to opt out of a 1994 agreement with Washington that urged North
Korea to freeze Soviet-designed reactors suspected of producing
weapons-grade plutonium in exchange for a U.S.-led consortium building two
dlrs 4.6 billion light-water reactors in North Korea.
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I find it hard to believe that the U.S. isn't taking a harder line on this. Maybe Russia is sincere about collecting and keeping all reactor waste, and ensuring that the facility is open to IAEA inspections, but it just seems like toying with the lid of Pandora's Box. I think the Iranian lip service to |
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