Iran-Pakistan connection could shift vote at IAEA

Iran-Pakistan connection could shift vote at IAEA
DUBAI - Even as the world awaits a credible solution to the Iranian nuclear conundrum, the Iranian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted against further atomic checks in the country. 183 out of the 197 members present at a meeting on Sunday voted for this resolution.

The board members of the International Atomic Energy Agency are scheduled to meet in Vienna this Thursday to decide if Iran should be referred to the UN Security Council. But Iranians have shown scant regard for this arrangement, "If they send Iran to the Security Council … the government will be obliged to end all its voluntary measures and restart its activities," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the foreign policy and national security commission after the MPs voted to reject further checks. In the backdrop of all this hectic activity, an IAEA report released on Friday says that Iran got nuclear blueprints form the Father of the Pakistani atom bomb, A Q Khan.

The report says that the blueprints were related to the construction of the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. These revelations could tilt the vote against Iran and could herald in another crisis in the Middle East.

"Iran owes the Board of Governors its explanation of what was it doing with these documents," chief U.S. delegate to the IAEA Gregory Schulte said. "Why did it fail to disclose them to the Board and to the IAEA in the past?"

This new twist comes even as the United States, Germany, Britain and France agreed on a compromise to allow Iran to enrich Uranium for peaceful purposes in Russia. The US fears that Iran is enriching Uranium of a high, weapons-grade level rather than a low grade one required for nuclear reactors that generate power.

So far Iran, which is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has maintained that it was enriching Uranium for domestic use and not for nuclear bombs. But Friday's report could tilt the balance against it at IAEA.