Tehran has become the «master of uranium enrichment» and will never suspend its program, a senior Iranian envoy said Thursday. The comments, from Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, touched on the focus of the meeting of the IAEA'S 35-nation board in its fourth day Thursday _ Iran's refusal to heed Council demands to suspend its nuclear programs and increase cooperation with an IAEA probe of its activities. Reflecting the deadlock, Soltanieh's American counterpart, Gregory L. Schulte, insisted Iran had no room for maneuver on Council demands to freeze both enrichment and construction of a nuclear reactor that will be able to produce plutonium once it is completed sometime in the next decade. «The message is very clear ... Iran is a master of uranium enrichment technology,» he told reporters. «There is no way suspension could be justified.» On his part, Schulte, the U.S. envoy, scoffed at Soltanieh's claim that his country had mastered all aspects of the technology, telling Associated Press Television News: «The Iranian ambassador spins faster than any centrifuge.»
