Iran said on Wednesday it had told the United Nations enough about its nuclear programme and had no obligation to say more, rebuffing calls for it to be more open and dispel suspicions it is building a nuclear bomb.
"Iran has given enough answers to the agency's questions," Hassan Rohani, head of Supreme National Security Council and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.
On Tuesday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog body, said Iran had continued to hide from it technology and research that could be linked to a weapons programme - despite its declaration in October that it had no more secrets to divulge.
"We have other research projects which we haven't announced to the agency and we don't think it is necessary to announce to the agency," Rohani said. The IRNA report gave no details on the kinds of projects he was referring to.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said in a statement sent to Reuters that outstanding IAEA concerns about Tehran's nuclear programme were "purely procedural" and did not undermine Iran's denials that is pursuing atomic arms.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Tuesday Tehran's failure to disclose sensitive research in its October declaration was a "setback" and said he wanted to see "much more prompt" information coming from the Islamic republic.
"I hope this will be the last time any aspect of the programme has not been declared to us," ElBaradei said during a flight from the Libyan capital Tripoli to Rome. However, he praised Iran's overall co-operation and its decision to suspend all activities related to the enrichment of uranium.
The IAEA said Iran had failed to declare designs and parts for advanced "P2" centrifuges, which can produce material for nuclear weapons, as well as experiments with polonium-210, a substance that can help trigger a chain reaction in a bomb.
Rohani took issue with ElBaradei's view of the P2 issue, saying Iran was not obliged to report the centrifuge research.
On the subject of polonium, Asefi said the issue had been misunderstood and misrepresented by the media. "What was published about an unfinished research work 13 years ago about polonium is only a misunderstanding which will be solved soon."
The United States, which once listed Iran on an "axis of evil" of countries seeking weapons of mass destruction, predicted there would be more revelations about Iran's nuclear programme.
The P2 centrifuges are probably "the tip of an iceberg of a larger and more advanced programme in Iran," a US official told Reuters. "If the IAEA keeps looking, it will find that."
But several diplomats in Vienna told Reuters they doubted the quality of some US intelligence on Iran.
"Remember that it wasn't the CIA or MI6 that uncovered the Iranian enrichment programme, it was the NCRI," said a diplomat close to the IAEA, referring to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of exiled opposition groups that Washington considers a terrorist organisation.
In August 2002, the NCRI broke the news about the massive underground uranium enrichment facility Iran was constructing at Natanz but had failed to declare to the IAEA.
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