El Baradei Statement on Iran...3 March 2008 | Vienna, Austria

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2008/ebsp2008n003.html#iran

see also
In Focus : IAEA and Iran
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml


"...Last August, Iran agreed to a work plan with the Secretariat to clarify all remaining outstanding issues about its past activities and, to that end, to apply the necessary transparency measures required by the Agency. As a result, the Agency was able, as I reported to you in November, to clarify important outstanding issues regarding the scope and nature of Iran´s declared enrichment programme - the acquisition of P-1 and P-2 centrifuge technologies.

As you can see from the present report, the Agency has since then been able to clarify all but one of the remaining outstanding issues, as identified in the work plan, relevant to Iran´s past activities. Although we continue to seek corroboration of our findings and to verify the completeness of Iran´s declarations, the Agency´s technical judgment is that these issues are no longer outstanding at this stage. This is obviously encouraging...


After a period during which Iran was reluctant to fully discuss this issue, Iran finally agreed in the work plan to address it. Iran continues to maintain that these alleged studies either relate to conventional weapons only, or are fabricated. However, a full-fledged examination of this issue has yet to take place. The Agency has shared technical information with Iran on all allegations since 2005, and showed Iran actual documentation on the alleged Green Salt Project in 2006. However, the Agency was authorised only as recently as early February 2008 to show Iran actual documentation on the alleged high explosive studies, and only in mid-February 2008 to show Iran the documentation and material relevant to the alleged missile re-entry vehicle.

The Agency will follow the required due process in continuing to clarify both the authenticity of the documentation related to the alleged studies, to the extent possible, and the substantive matters concerned. I should add, however, that the Agency has not detected the use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this regard. I urge Iran to be as active and as cooperative as possible in working with the Agency to clarify this matter of serious concern. This is necessary to enable the Agency to make a determination about the nature and scope of all of Iran´s past nuclear activities..."



Is the information furnished to the IAEA accurate???

POLITICS: Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/31438

"The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" -- 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop -- as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation...


The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups...


Scott Ritter, the former U.S. military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created. The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud..."

[EFerrari]

1. This story stinks to heaven, imho. Ritter is probably right. n/t

[slipslidingaway]

2. Ritter and El Baradei have a better track record than this

administration

:shrug:

[EFerrari]

6. Much better! n/t

[Hydra]

3. How long before the truth gets buried

beneath a mammoth pile of bs?

I just read that the UN voted 14-0 for more sanctions.

So much effort to bury a country that is unlikely to be any kind of a threat in a MAD world.

[slipslidingaway]

4. It's already being buried...

just saw the 14-0 thread for more sanctions???

[peacetalksforall]

5. This morning there was a teaser posting on DU that referred to atimes.com

The poster sais that there was something in atimes that we would be talking about tomorrow.

This article was at the link given and here are four paragraphs from it - don't know if it's new - and don't know if this is an OK link for DU admin.

"In her February 2006 report on the laptop documents, the Post's Linzer said CIA analysts had originally speculated that a "third country, such as Israel, had fabricated the evidence". They eventually "discounted that theory", she wrote, without explaining why.

Since 2002, new information has emerged indicating that the MEK did not obtain the 2002 data on Natanz itself but received it from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Yossi Melman and Meier Javadanfar, who co-authored a book on the Iranian nuclear program last year, write that they were told by "very senior Israeli Intelligence officials" in late 2006 that Israeli intelligence had known about Natanz for a full year before the Iranian group's press conference. They explained that they had chosen not to reveal it to the public "because of safety concerns for the sources that provided the information".

Shahriar Ahy, an adviser to monarchist leader Reza Pahlavi, told journalist Connie Bruck that the detailed information on Natanz had not come from the MEK but from "a friendly government, and it had come to more than one opposition group, not only the Mujahideen".

Bruck wrote in the New Yorker on March, 16, 2006, that when he was asked if the "friendly government" was Israel, Ahy smiled and said, "The friendly government did not want to be the source of it, publicly. If the friendly government gives it to the US publicly, then it would be received differently. Better to come from an opposition group."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JC04Ak03.html

There was another article on Michelle Obama - don't know which one the poster is talking about or if it's something else.

Does anyhone know what atimes is. I don't think it is Asia Times. Gareth Porter wrote the article.

I'll edit to add the post from this morning.

From this morning:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2953316

[slipslidingaway]

7. This is the same article that afterdowningstreet carried except

for the title.

:shrug:


Also of interest...

Googling Laptops of Death
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/12/googling_laptop.html

posted here this morning...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2953592&mesg_id=2953684

[Ghost Dog]

9. This is Asia Times, yes,

and certainly legitimate for DU in my experience. I refer to it quite often in the daily Stock Market Watch thread.

[slipslidingaway]

8. New Iran sanctions target some civilian goods...

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/03/iran.un.ap/

"...Monday's council meeting was delayed for nearly two hours because of a dispute over plans by Britain, France and Germany to present a resolution critical of Iran before the IAEA board...


Grigory Berdennikov, the chief Russian delegate to the IAEA, said in Vienna that "we are not happy about developments here in Vienna -- we were not informed."

A European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russians asked that no resolution be presented in Vienna as a condition for voting on the sanctions resolution in New York. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

The resolution drafted by the Europeans would have praised progress made in the IAEA investigation, but noted that the investigation was incomplete because Iran had refused to answer questions about its alleged weapons experiments. It also said the IAEA board -- not the agency's leaders -- had the final authority to declare the investigation into Iran's past nuclear programs closed..."