Iran Demands Removal of IAEA Head
Charles Johnson
Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 12:16 pm PST • Views: 254
No, they don’t want to behead him (yet), but Iran is tossing out the IAEA’s chief nuclear inspector: Iran wants senior atom inspector out.
It’s a purely symbolic gesture. He wasn’t doing anything anyway.
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, cranking up a war of nerves with the West, has demanded the removal of the official running U.N. nuclear inspections, diplomats said on Friday.
Warning of a spiral toward conflict, the head of the U.N. atomic agency called on Iran and the West to declare a “timeout” under which Iranian nuclear work and U.N. sanctions would be suspended simultaneously. [It’s the “Day Care” school of international diplomacy. —ed.]
Tehran’s move, following a ban on 38 inspectors from four major Western nations announced on Monday, appeared aimed at testing Western resolve over its disputed nuclear activity while stopping short of violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
An Iranian diplomat quoted by the official news agency IRNA accused the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Iran section head of passing on confidential information about Iranian nuclear sites to nations arrayed against Tehran. In addition, any inspectors from Western countries that sponsored U.N. sanctions slapped on Iran last month were now barred from working in Iran, the unnamed diplomat said.
Frank says: