Hans Blix surprised by US intel report on Iran

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IAEA Elbaradei: No Proof of Any Nuke Weapon in Iran

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Swedish diplomat, who tried to avert the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq
because no weapons of mass destruction had been found by UN inspectors,
said the US intelligence report released Monday caught him off guard.

Veteran
Swedish diplomat and Former UN nuclear chief Hans Blix said Wednesday
that he was surprised by the US intelligence agencies' conclusion that
Iran has stopped developing nuclear weapons but assumed it was because
they don't want to take the blame for a new war in the region.

"An
armed action against Iran cannot happen after this for the next few
years," said Blix, who now chairs Sweden's Weapons of Mass Destruction
Commission.

"I was surprised," Blix told reporters. "For a
rather long time we had heard very assured statements from the US side
that Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons and that the program of
enrichment is a part of that effort."

Now, he noted, they have
concluded that the process toward the weapons program was interrupted
in 2003 and that they do not see such a program at the present time.

Blix
said the US agencies likely acted because they heard "all the rhetoric
of World War III - and either we have the Iranian bomb or we have the
bombing of Iran."

The report on Iran followed an inaccurate 2002 assessment by US intelligence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

"The
intelligence services got a lot of blame for the invasion of Iraq that
they had exaggerated what they saw ," Blix said. "This time they do not
want to carry the responsibility."

He said he didn't know what evidence the US intelligence agencies have that proves the Iranians abandoned their weapons program.

Blix, who formerly headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that's further than the IAEA has gone.

"The
IAEA doesn't say there is nothing. They simply say we have not seen any
evidence of it," he said. "Proving the negative is very difficult if at
all possible."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the
new U.S. intelligence report on Tehran's nuclear program is "a victory"
for the Iranian nation against world powers.

Speaking in western
Ilam province Wednesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad also said Iran will not
retreat "one step" in its pursuit of peaceful nuclear technology.

US President George Bush said that Iran remains a threat to the world despite new intelligence report saying that the country may not be building nuclear weapons.Bush stressed that Iran was still trying to enrich uranium and could restart its weapons programme.

Earlier
the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released on Monday
couldhamper US efforts to convince other world powers to agree on a
third ackage of UN sanctions against Iran for defying demands to halt ranium enrichment activities.Iran says it wants nuclear technology only for civilian purposes, such as electricity generation.

Germany,
along with Britain and France, led a diplomatic initiative with Tehran
in 2004 and 2005 in which it discussed trade and other economic ncentives for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, but the effort fell
apart with the election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian resident.

Two
days after a US intelligence report stated Iran had halted its nuclear
weapons program, US President George W Bush is calling on Tehran to
come clean about it.

Mr Bush says the Iranian regime has yet to acknowledge its past nuclear program and he wants to Tehran to release details of it.

President Shimon Peres on Wednesday told former
US foreign minister Madeleine Albright that Iran is investing billions
of dollars in the development of long range ballistic missiles in order
to load them with nuclear warheads, Israel Radio reported.

Albright told Peres that the new US intelligence report released Tuesday "caused confusion and complication."