Press Conference Regarding U.S. Secretary to State's Comments to IAEA Board of Governors Meeting

March 5, 2005

Weapon Program: 

  • Nuclear

Related Country: 

  • United States

Unofficial translation from Russian

Question: Please comment on the call by the US Secretary of State on the IAEA to check the "suspicious activities" of Iran related to the construction of an underground tunnel.

Commentary: In a statement to the March session of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) its Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt said that on December 15 in the course of the checks at the uranium conversion plant in Isfahan there had been discovered the construction of an underground tunnel, of which Iran had not informed the agency in time (that is, half a year before the start of the construction).

Following Goldschmidt's remarks US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on the IAEA to check the "suspicious activities" of Iran in this connection.

The Iranian side claims that information on the tunnel was contained in the renewed documentation it presented to the IAEA on December 3 concerning the uranium conversion plant in Isfahan and that the construction has no relationship to the conversion process itself, and the tunnel is being created solely for the safe storage of nuclear materials.

For our part, we hope for these different interpretations to be removed in the course of the routine verification activities of the IAEA in Iran.