IRAN:Iran, cranking up a war of nerves with the west, has demanded the removal of the official running UN nuclear inspections, diplomats said yesterday.
Warning of a spiral towards conflict, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called on both Iran and the west to declare a "time-out" under which Iranian nuclear work and UN sanctions would be suspended simultaneously.
Tehran's move, which follows a ban on 38 inspectors from four major western states, announced on Monday, appeared to be aimed at testing western resolve over its disputed nuclear activity while stopping short of violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
An Iranian diplomat quoted by the official news agency IRNA accused the Iran section head of the IAEA of passing on confidential information about Iranian nuclear sites to countries which were aligned against Tehran.
In addition, any inspectors from western countries which sponsored UN sanctions slapped on Iran last month were now barred from working in Iran, the unnamed diplomat said.
A senior Vienna diplomat familiar with IAEA operations said that Iran had written to the agency asking for the removal of Chris Charlier, a Belgian in charge of the agency's Iran dossier.
Western powers suspect that Iran is trying to assemble warheads behind the façade of a civilian nuclear project. Tehran insists that it is seeking only nuclear generation of electricity.
Iran plans to start installing 3,000 centrifuges shortly, escalating a modest, experimental enrichment project to "industrial scale".
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, IAEA director Mohamed El Baradei appealed to both Iran and the west to declare a "time-out".
Fears that the US is preparing to attack Iran have been raised by the arrival of an additional US aircraft-carrier in the Gulf and a US warning that it would not let Iran provide weapons and support to insurgents in Iraq. - (Reuters)