IAEA inspectors revisit disputed Iran nuclear site

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. inspectors revisited Iran's second uranium enrichment facility on Thursday, diplomats said, after voicing concern that Tehran's belated disclosure of the nuclear site meant more may be hidden away.

The inspectors aimed to make further checks of the Fordow site's layout and wanted more Iranian explanations to pinpoint the project's chronology and original purpose, as well as access to its director and designers.

Iran revealed the site to the International Atomic Energy Agency in September, two years after it said construction began. The IAEA said Iran was legally bound to own up about the plant as soon as plans were drafted. Iran disputes this.

An IAEA report on Monday said the inspectors' first visit to the site last month did not yield all the information they needed to verify its purpose from the beginning was peaceful -- that is, churning out low-enriched uranium for electricity generation, rather than high-enriched material for atomic bombs.

The report also said Iran's tardy disclosure "reduces confidence" in the absence of further undeclared sites.

A senior Iranian envoy told Reuters on Tuesday that Iran hatched the bunkered Fordow site to preserve enrichment work in case its larger Natanz enrichment complex were bombed. He called Fordow a "political message" that neither sanctions nor possible military assault would ever cripple Tehran's nuclear programme.

But Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the U.N. atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said suspicions it had more nuclear production sites squirreled away were wrong and unfair, and it was living up to transparency commitments to the IAEA.

Western analysts said Fordow, due for start-up in 2011, could not have run without support sites since Tehran's one known uranium processing centre at Isfahan serves Natanz and would be targeted in any air strikes.