VIENNA - IN AN unusually strongly worded report, the United Nations nuclear watchdog has said Iran may be withholding information needed to establish whether it tried to make nuclear arms.
The tone of the language suggests that Teheran is continuing to stonewall the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and raises fears that it still has clandestine weapons programmes. It also gives a glimpse of the frustration of investigators stymied in their attempts to get full answers.
A senior UN official familiar with the agency investigation said none of its many previous reports had been as plain-spoken in taking Teheran to task for not being forthright.
Iran has described its cooperation with the agency probe into its alleged nuclear weapons experiments as positive, suggesting that it was providing information requested.
Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, Mr Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, said as much again in response to the report on Monday, claiming that it described 'the peaceful nature of our nuclear actions'.
'The Americans failed...in shameful attempts' to co-opt the agency into delivering anti-Iranian findings, he added.
But his United States counterpart Gregory Schulte described the report as a strong indictment of Iran's defiance of the international community, noting its 'long list of questions that Iran has failed to answer' about its alleged weapons programme.
'At the same time that Iran is stonewalling its inspectors, it's moving forward in developing its enrichment capability in violation of Security Council resolutions,' he said.
The IAEA report also noted that Iran remained defiant in the face of Security Council demands to stop uranium enrichment.
Shrugging off three sets of council sanctions, Iran had increased the number of operational centrifuges - machines that churn out enriched uranium - by about 500 to 3,500 since the last IAEA report in February, said the report.
And the senior UN official said Teheran's goal of 6,000 machines running by summer was 'pretty much plausible'.
Uranium can be used as nuclear fuel or in warheads, depending on the degree of enrichment. Iran insists that it wants only to generate power, and has the right to do so.
But the IAEA said: 'Iran may have additional information, in particular on high explosives testing and missile-related activities, which... Iran should share with the agency.'
And although the US concluded that Teheran's nuclear weapons programme was abandoned in 2003, the IAEA report says it is still a 'matter of serious concern', suggesting that fears of clandestine weapons activities remain.
Meanwhile yesterday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the new Parliament to show unity with his government, amid expectations that the chamber could be critical of his increasingly controversial economic policies.
'Government and parliament should become an example of unity and harmony for the world,' he said at the opening ceremony of the new assembly.
'We should be careful not to fall into quarrels and conflicts that evil hands, corrupt powers and some ignorant people are stirring up.'
