US: Iranian warhead blueprint 'alarming'

A ranking International Atomic Energy Agency official called Teheran's possession of a drawing showing how to make part of an atomic warhead "alarming" May 29 and said the onus is on Iran to prove it had not tried to develop nuclear arms, said diplomats attending a closed briefing. The US said the evidence detailed by IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen increased concerns that Teheran had tried to make such weapons. "Today's briefing showed ... strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully at least until recently to build a bomb," Gregory L. Schulte, the chief US delegate to the agency, told reporters. Rejecting the allegation, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Schulte's Iranian counterpart, again dismissed the evidence as "baseless and fabricated documents and papers." Separately, a senior diplomat suggested the agency was not accepting as fact US intelligence estimates that the Islamic Republic stopped active pursuit of nuclear weapons five years ago. Queried on documents in the agency's possession possibly linked to research in such weapons and bearing dates into early 2004, he told The Associated Press that the IAEA was reserving its judgment on whether they indicated nuclear weapons work past 2003 until it finished its own investigations. The diplomats quoted Heinonen as saying that Iran's possession of a drawing showing how to mold uranium metal into the shape of a warhead was "alarming" - even though it was not the ultimate key to making a nuclear weapon - because it raised questions about why a non-nuclear weapons state would want to have it.