Iran fails to suspend enrichment: IAEA

VIENNA (AFP) - Iran has failed to comply with a UN Security Council demand to halt its uranium enrichment activities, according to a UN atomic agency report issued Thursday.

"Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report being filed to the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors and the UN Security Council.

A UN Security Council resolution passed December 23, imposed limited sanctions on Iran to get it to freeze enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian reactors but can also produce atom bomb material.

The IAEA report said Iran has failed to provide cooperation on crucial outstanding issues, such as handing over a 15-page document outlining the plan for making the core of atom bombs.

The IAEA is also asking for Iran to allow key monitoring cameras at a huge underground enrichment site being built in Natanz in the center of the country.

Iran insists its programme is only to provide fuel for nuclear power plants, but the United States charges that Tehran is secretly developing atomic weapons.

"We have recently received the report. We are disappointed that Iran has not complied with resolution 1737," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Iran is enriching uranium above-ground in Natanz and has installed four 164-centrifuge cascade production lines at the underground site there, the IAEA report said.

Iran is enriching uranium at a level "below 5 percent U-235" -- far below the 90 percent refinement for the U-235 isotope needed to make weapons, it added.

The amount of feedstock uranium gas fed into the pilot plant was 66 kilograms, a small amount useful only for research.

At the underground facility, heavily bunkered against possible air strikes, Iran is already operating two of the cascades, but "under vacuum" and not with the feedstock uranium gas needed for enrichment, the report said, adding that its information was current as of February 17.

Iran has blocked IAEA inspectors from installing cameras to monitor the hall where the centrifuges are located and the report said the agency had requested the cameras be fixed in place during its next visit to Natanz, scheduled for March 3-5.

Iran had told the IAEA in January that it wanted to "continue progressively with the installation of 18 cascades" and to bring them gradually into operation by May."

A senior UN official said it was clear that Iran was increasing rather than freezing uranium enrichment operations.

A diplomat close to the IAEA said that Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani had clearly told IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei at a meeting in Vienna Tuesday that sanctions would not work against Iran and that Tehran would not stop enrichment or enrichment-related activities under pressure.