Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on his first prime ministerial visit to Japan called on Monday for new United Nations sanctions to be imposed on Iran, after the UN nuclear watchdog said Tehran had failed to provide satisfactory answers to reports showing work linked to atomic bombs.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday it had confronted Iran with Western intelligence reports and Tehran had not so far explained documents pointing to undeclared efforts to "weaponize" nuclear materials by linking uranium processing with explosives and designing a missile warhead.
Olmert arrived in Tokyo on Monday for a four-day visit, during which he will meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the Japanese capital.
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The IAEA report showed Iran was continuing with a nuclear weapons program and the U.N. Security Council should impose more sanctions, the Israeli prime minister said.
"If we had formulated the report, we would have made it sharper," Olmert told reporters on the flight to Tokyo, where he will stay until Thursday.
"The basic fact doesn't change. There is a plan to create non-conventional weapons. It must be stopped."
Iran said Sunday that it has begun operating a new generation of centrifuges to enrich uranium, the first official confirmation by Tehran after diplomats with the United Nations nuclear watchdog reported the
development earlier this month.
The new IR-2 centrifuges can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the machines that now form the backbone of Iran's controversial nuclear program.
"We are [now] running a new generation of centrifuges," the official IRNA news agency quoted Javad Vaidi, deputy of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, as saying without providing further detail.
The International Atomic Energy Agency highlighted the new-generation
centrifuges in its latest report on Iran released Friday, but did not provide details on their operation.
Earlier in February, diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based IAEA told The Associated Press that 10 IR-2 centrifuges had begun processing small
quantities of uranium hexafluride gas in a process that can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a weapon.
That number is far too few to produce enriched uranium in the quantities
needed for an industrial scale energy or a weapons program and far below the 3,000 older centrifuges set up in Iran's underground enrichment plant in the central Iranian town of Natanz.
Iran is already under two sets of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment. The five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany have agreed on a draft resolution for a third set of sanctions.
Iran: New UN sanctions will be 'costly' for West
Vaidi warned earlier Sunday that a new UN sanctions resolution on the Islamic Republic would be "costly" for the West.
"Some Western powers are following the previous wrong path ... choosing a wrong path and passing resolutions against Iran will be costly for them," he was quoted by IRNA as saying.
He said the third UN sanctions resolution was "politically motivated."
"Iran's nuclear issue is just a pretext ... the West wants to tell Iran that the nuclear programme has costs," Vaeedi said.
On Saturday, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that "world powers can pass United Nations sanctions resolutions for 100 years without deterring Iran from its nuclear ambitions."
Ahmadinejad's defiant comments came one day after a report, released Friday by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend the uranium centrifuge program, which could produce both civilian nuclear fuel and the material for a nuclear bomb.
Tehran insists its plans are peaceful. But the United States, which has accused Iran of seeking to build nuclear bombs, said Friday's International Atomic Energy Agency report was a good reason to impose more, even tighter UN sanctions against Iran.
"If they want to continue with that path [of sanctions], we will not be harmed. They can issue resolutions for 100 years," the president told state television in an interview.
Those leading the bid to impose more penalties, an apparent reference to Washington, and its allies could not "bring the Iranian nation to its knees," he said.
"If they continue [with this pressure], we have designed reciprocal actions," he said without elaborating.
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