Pat Dollard

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LA TIMES:

U.S. commits to arms control, engaging with Iran

At a meeting of the IAEA, Obama’s envoy says U.S. seeks to make ‘dramatic reductions’ in U.S. and Russian weapons stockpiles and ban the production of new nuclear weapons material.

Reporting from Vienna — At the first board meeting of the world’s nuclear watchdog since the inauguration of President Obama, his envoy today committed the United States to diplomatic outreach and disarmament of its own nuclear stockpile as ways to dissuade nations such as Iran from pursuing atomic weapons.

Outlining a new American approach toward arms control, envoy Gregory Schulte noted the new administration’s “readiness for direct engagement with Tehran” to persuade its leadership to not pursue sensitive nuclear technology.

Schulte’s remarks were delivered to a closed-door meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors.

He also said the U.S. would resurrect nuclear disarmament efforts that fell by the wayside during the Bush administration, including making “dramatic reductions” in U.S. and Russian weapons stockpiles and banning the production of “new nuclear weapons material,” according to a copy of his prepared remarks.

“President Obama supports the goal of working toward a world without nuclear weapons,” he said. “His administration intends to renew America’s commitment to disarmament.”

The statement came a day after Navy Adm. Michael J. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Iran had enough low-enriched uranium for a weapon, a conclusion also drawn by IAEA officials last month.

An Iranian official today rejected the statement as “baseless.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had qualified Mullen’s remark by noting that Iran still had a long way to go before building a bomb, which requires highly enriched uranium.

“How is it possible that the enrichment level of 3% to 4% suddenly mounts to 90%?” Qashqavi said to reporters in Tehran, according to official news reports. “We have repeatedly said that manufacturing atomic bombs has no place in our defensive doctrine.”

Iran insists its nuclear program is meant only to produce low-grade uranium to generate electricity while the U.S., Europe and Israel allege it is trying to create a weapons capability. An IAEA report last month said Iran had accumulated at least 2,227 pounds of reactor-grade enriched uranium, an amount which could theoretically yield enough weapons-grade material for a single bomb.

Even with its 1-ton stockpile of nuclear material, Iran would have to take the dramatic steps of kicking out international inspectors, withdrawing from treaty obligations and begin further refining its enriched uranium, moves that would likely trigger a major global confrontation.

Western diplomats have tried for years to use international arms-control regulations to hem in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

But here in Vienna, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told diplomats that his inspectors and investigators were “unable to make any progress” in resolving questions about Iran’s past nuclear activities and continue to be barred from some nuclear facilities and personnel, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.

ElBaradei noted during the first day of the board of governors meeting that construction on 10 new nuclear reactors began in 2008, the most since 1985, a year before a major accident at Soviet-built reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine frightened governments away from atomic energy.