Russia delays Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station

Russia on Monday said it would not start a nuclear reactor at Iran's Bushehr atomic power station by the end of the year as planned, citing technical reasons.

"The launch will not happen by the end of the year," Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko told reporters. "The engineers have to reach their findings."

Russia's nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko had said in February that the Bushehr launch was scheduled for 2009 but the plant has been delayed frequently.

Shmatko said the Bushehr decision was purely technical and that Russia would fulfill its contractual obligations to Iran.

But diplomats say Russia uses Bushehr as a lever in relations with Tehran, which is suspected by the United States and other Western powers of seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday after meeting US leader Barack Obama in Singapore that Moscow was not completely happy about the pace of dialogue between Iran and the international community over Tehran's nuclear program.

Russia started deliveries of nuclear fuel for Bushehr in late 2007, a step both Washington and Moscow said removed any need for Iran to have its own uranium enrichment program. Russia last year completed delivery of fuel under a contract estimated to be worth about $1 billion.

Russia says the plant is purely civilian and cannot be used for any weapons program, as Iran will return all spent fuel rods to Russia.

YNet

UN nuclear team visits Iran site

A team from the UN's nuclear watchdog has inspected a controversial Iranian uranium enrichment plant near the town of Qom.

The four inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the facility on Sunday, Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency said.

"The inspectors ... visited the facility in central Iran. They are expected to visit the site again," it said.

Iran's disclosure of the Qom plant's existence on September 21 sparked a wave of global outrage.

Iran has already been enriching uranium - the most controversial aspect of its nuclear project - for several years at another plant in the central city of Natanz, in defiance of three sets of UN sanctions.

Uranium enrichment is the focus of Western concern that Iran's ultimate aim is to manufacture a nuclear weapon, a charge strongly denied by Tehran.

Enriched uranium produces fuel for civilian reactors, but in highly extended form can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

On Saturday, Mehr quoted an unnamed Vienna-based official as saying that the IAEA inspectors would "compare the information given by Iran [about the Qom plant] with the facility during their visit."

Hossein Ebrahimi, an Iranian legislator, said the IAEA inspection "shows that Iranian nuclear activities are peaceful and transparent".

The inspection comes as Barack Obama, the US president, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, and France's Nicolas Sarkozy pledged support for a separate deal to end the crisis over Iran's uranium enrichment drive.

The White House said the three "affirmed their full support" for a UN-brokered deal under which Tehran's existing stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) would be sent abroad.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said the UN inspectors had only three days to do their job.

"They say they are going to use all technical tools available to them to assess whether there has been any recent activity at the plant. The Iranians, of course, deny this. They say that enriching has not started yet," she said.

"But what we understand is that [the] inspectors will be taking environmental swaps at the plant - trying to assess whether there is any military dimension at all.

"And that's really key - to try to prove that Iran's intentions are peaceful or whether the plant was going to be used for military purposes.

"The Iranians say they're going to fill the plant with the latest kind of centrifuges, which will only be able to produce low-enriched uranium. That's what the inspectors will have to assess and report back to Mohamed ElBaradei [head of the IAEA] in November."

Tehran missed a Friday deadline for responding to the UN deal about uranium, saying it would give its answer next week.

State TV has said Iran would prefer to buy uranium for a reactor that makes medical isotopes, rather than send its own stock abroad for enrichment.

Ali Larijani, Iran's parliament speaker, said on Saturday that Western powers are trying to "cheat" Iran through deal.

"They are saying we will give you the 20 per cent [enriched uranium] fuel for the Tehran reactor only if you give us your enriched uranium," he told Iran's ISNA news agency.

"I see no links between providing the fuel for the Tehran reactor and sending Iran's low enriched uranium abroad."

Source: Al Jazeera (English)

New US law hits Iran where it hurts

THE US House of Representatives has sent a message to Iran that the pursuit of nuclear capability will not go unpunished, approving legislation that allows state and local governments to curtail investments in corporations that do business in Iran's energy sector.

The legislation passed yesterday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton downplayed differences with Moscow over tougher moves against Iran.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin highlighted the contrasts, saying it was "premature" to threaten sanctions against Tehran.

The new legislation protects from shareholder lawsuits those investment managers who divest funds from companies that are involved in Iran's energy sector or have provided equipment for the transport of oil or liquefied natural gas from Iran.

The bill - which passed the House 414-6 and now goes to the Senate - did not impose new sanctions, said its author, financial services committee chairman Barney Frank, a Democrat.

"What it does is to make it very clear that Americans who are deeply concerned about the prospect of Iranian nuclear power, and other aspects of Iranian governance, that they are able to act on those (concerns)," Mr Frank said.

"Several international firms continue to subsidise Iran's nuclear ambitions by investing billions of dollars in the regime's energy sector," said Republican Mark Kirk. "This legislation gives a strong 'go' signal to state and local leaders around America to get out of Iran."

Calls for tougher sanctions intensified after it was revealed that Tehran was operating a previously undisclosed uranium-enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom.

The Obama administration said it hoped to craft an international consensus on new multilateral sanctions.

But Mr Putin said yesterday that talking about sanctions against Iran could disrupt negotiations with Tehran regarding its nuclear program.

At the end of a two-day visit to Russia where Iran policy topped the agenda, Mrs Clinton said the Kremlin agreed with the US that tougher sanctions could be inevitable if Iran failed to allay the nuclear concerns.

She said she was encouraged after a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who first suggested last month that Russia might abandon its traditional opposition to sanctions if Iran failed to co-operate.

But Russian officials have sent mixed signals on the subject since then, leading analysts to speculate over differences within the leadership.

Mr Putin is widely viewed as the more powerful of the pair of top leaders and more sceptical about US intentions.

Asked about possible differences with Mr Medvedev on Iran, Mr Putin said yesterday: "Our President determines foreign policy. If Dmitry Anatolievich (Medvedev) said (sanctions are) inevitable, they're inevitable. But if you look closely at all his statements and the context he made them in, you'll be convinced that there's no steel-and-concrete determination towards sanctions."

Mr Putin was speaking while on a visit to Beijing, at the end of a summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a group including Russia and China that has sought to counter Western domination of the international system.

Russia and China have frequently opposed tighter sanctions on Iran in the UN Security Council, where they hold vetoes.

Mr Putin told Chinese media the co-operation between the two countries "restrains some of our more hot-headed colleagues". He failed to identify whom he was referring to.

Mrs Clinton, who did not meet Mr Putin on her Russian visit, said: "I'm very pleased about how supportive the Russians have been in what has become a united international effort."

In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, she added: "I believe if sanctions become necessary we will have support from Russia."

Source: The Australian

Suicide bomber kills 20 in Caucasus

Tony Halpin | August 18

CARNAGE returned to the Caucasus yesterday when a suicide bomber killed 20 people and wounded 138 by ramming a truck loaded with explosives into a police station in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia.

The attack in the city of Nazran undermined claims by the Kremlin that it had restored order to the North Caucasus - a region where Islamic militancy is gaining ground in the face of biting poverty and a brutal government crackdown.

The bombing was timed to coincide with morning roll call at the police headquarters, which was devastated in the blast. Prosecutors said that all of the dead and many of the wounded were police.

President Medvedev reacted by dismissing Ingushetia's Interior Minister, declaring on state television that "this terrorist act could have been avoided". He ordered the federal Interior Minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev, to present proposals for toughening security in the region.

"I believe this was not only a result of problems connected to terrorist activities, but also a result of the unsatisfactory performance of the republic's law enforcement agencies," Mr Medvedev said.

In a sign of official desperation over spiralling violence by Islamist militants in the North Caucasus, however, Ingushetia's Kremlin-appointed President lashed out at the West.

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov accused Britain, the US and Israel of fomenting unrest in the region, while also blaming Islamist militants.

"I am miles from believing that Arabs are behind this. There are other more serious forces there...We understand whose interests these are: the United States, Britain, and Israel too," Mr Yevkurov told Russian News Service radio.

"The West will keep seeking to prevent Russia from reviving the former Soviet might."

Prosecutors said that a Russian-made Gazelle truck smashed through a security gate at the police headquarters and sped into a courtyard where officers were lined up for inspection. Police shot at the driver, said Svetlana Gorbakova, a spokeswoman for investigators.

The device left a crater four metres wide and two metres deep. It went off near the police armoury, causing ammunition to explode.

The suicide bomber struck in a densely-populated part of Nazran and the blast smashed windows and damaged balconies in apartment buildings up to 500 metres away. Officials said that at least 10 of the wounded were children.

Rescue workers said that the death toll could rise because they were still searching for people in the rubble of the police building. The scale of the casualties overwhelmed Nazran's medical facilities and an emergency plane was despatched to nearby Beslan to airlift the most critically injured for treatment in Moscow.

The assault undermined the Kremlin's claim to have stabilised the North Caucasus region, which includes Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. Militants have mounted almost daily attacks on police and Interior Ministry troops since Moscow declared victory in April in its decade-long war to defeat separatists in Chechnya.

Mr Yevkurov, who was badly hurt in an assassination attempt by another suicide bomber in June, said that the latest attack was carried out by Islamist militants who were avenging successful security operations against them along Ingushetia's border with Chechnya. He added: "It was an attempt to destabilise the situation and sow panic."

Ingushetia's construction minister was shot dead in his office last week, and a local Supreme Court Judge was killed shortly before the attempt to assassinate Mr Yevkurov.

President Kadyrov of Chechnya threatened a campaign to "liquidate" militants in Ingushetia, raising fears of a spreading conflict. He said: "We have enough political will and strength to withstand this evil. We have a common enemy and a common goal of neutralising it."

Analysts say that Islamist rebels have found fertile soil for recruitment among young people alienated by deep poverty in Ingushetia and brutal attempts by security forces to suppress dissent. Rights organisations accused Mr Yevkurov's predecessor, Murat Zyazikov, of widespread abuses, including torture and killings by security officials.

Mr Yevkurov threatened to pursue militants relentlessly after he was appointed by Mr Medvedev last October. But he has also set a more conciliatory tone by pledging to punish abuses and crack down on corruption.

Source: The Australian