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UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.
"We haven't received any information there is a parallel, ongoing, active nuclear weapon program," the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.
"Second, even if Iran were to be working on nuclear weapons ... they are at least (a) few years away from having such weapon," he said, citing Washington's own intelligence assessments.
"My fear (is) that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss. The Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire."
The White House Friday rejected any parallels between its Iran rhetoric and the run-up to the Iraq war, after fresh sanctions on Tehran and escalating US warnings fueled comparisons to the months before the 2003 invasion.
"We are absolutely committed to a diplomatic process," spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters.
"We would never take options off the table, but the diplomatic process is what we want to move forward with," he said, calling it "unwise" to rule out the use of force.
His comments came as US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been sharply ramping up their rhetoric about Iran, leading some critics to draw parallels with the late 2002 verbal escalation against Iraq.
In recent months, Bush has predicted "nuclear holocaust" and "World War III" if Tehran gets atomic weapons, while Cheney has warned of "serious consequences" for Iran if it defies global demands to freeze uranium enrichment -- echoing the UN resolution that Washington says authorized war in Iraq.
Iran insists that it is enriching uranium only for nuclear energy and denies US charges that it is seeking the bomb.
ElBaradei has been vindicated in his pre-war belief that Iraq was not resuming its own nuclear arms program, contrary to claims by Bush and Cheney.
However, he said that in the current dispute, "we cannot give Iran a pass right now, because there is still a lot of question marks."
"But have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No."
Merely "exchanging rhetoric" would not resolve the Iranian nuclear case, the IAEA chief said, adding that "the earlier we follow the North Korean model, the better for everybody."
North Korea has already detonated a nuclear device. But under six-nation talks, the Stalinist state has agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in return for a broad package of economic and diplomatic incentives.
ElBaradei said it is time "to stop spinning and hyping the Iranian issue because that's an issue that could have a major conflagration, and not only regionally but globally."
"It could even accelerate a drive by Iran, even if they are not working on a nuclear weapon today, to go for a nuclear weapon," the IAEA chief said.
"So we can talk about use of force as and when we (have) exhausted diplomacy ... but we are far, far away from that stage."
Foreign ministry officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States are preparing to hold new discussions about stronger UN sanctions against Iran, possibly as early as Friday in London.
Meanwhile one of ElBaradei's deputies, Olli Heinonen, is due to hold fresh talks in Tehran on Monday.
Heinonen clinched a deal in August for Iran to answer outstanding questions over its atomic program so that the IAEA can conclude a four-year investigation.

Lorne Gunter: The confused mind of the feckless Mohamed ElBaradei

It seems likely now that what Israel blew up from the air last month in Syria was a North Korean-style nuclear reactor under construction along the Euphrates River.
It's easy to see why such a facility would worry the Israelis.
For one thing, it's next door.
For another, the North Koreans' version is capable of producing enough weapons-grade nuclear material to construct one small atomic bomb a year. Split among a few terrorist groups, it could supply four to six good-sized dirty bombs -- conventional explosives wrapped in nuclear material that are capable of killing thousands and rendering whole sections of a large city uninhabitable for decades.
The reaction to the news of the Israeli air raid, though, by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, is most telling. It shows, again, just how two-faced the UN has been on the Iraq war, how ineffectual the IAEA is and what a farce the Nobel peace prize can be at times.
ElBaradei won the prize in 2005.
Speaking to the French paper Le Monde, ElBaradei angrily denounced Syria, Israel and any other country that had intelligence on the Syrian plant but did not share it with the IAEA.
"We have said," [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. "If any of you has the slightest information showing that there was anything linked to nuclear, we would of course be happy to investigate it. Frankly, I venture to hope that before people decide to bombard and use force, they will come and see us to convey their concerns."
Sorry, Mo, would that be an investigation with the same thoroughness and veracity as your investigations of the Iranian, Libyan, Iraqi and North Korean nuke programs? 'Cause if it is, the Israelis were probably wise to bomb first and ask for your assessment later.
ElBaradei is a player in international politics, not an impartial enforcer of non-proliferation treaties. His complete failure even to suspect Libya and Syria of nuclear intentions (when both countries were clearly working on bombs) should alone be enough to revoke his Nobel. But if not that, then surely his bias in the Iraq war would disqualify him.
On the eve of the March 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq, ElBaradei attempted to undermine Security Council endorsement of the attack by saying he could not tell whether Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons but that he suspected it was not.
Then in October 2004, when he was confident the world had forgotten his earlier reassurances, he castigated the US and Britain for permitting material and technology that could have been used to construct a bomb to disappear from Iraq.
When asked about the recent Israeli attack on the Syrian reactor, ElBaradei said "When the Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein's research nuclear reactor in 1981, the consequence was that Saddam Hussein pursued his program secretly. He began to establish a huge military nuclear program underground."
It is simply not possible for Iraq to have no nuclear program AND a "huge" underground program AND bomb-making material so dangerous it should have been seized immediately after the coalition gained control.
In every case, El Baradei's goal in making his public pronouncement has been to undermine international support for the US and its allies, not to make the world safer from nuclear weapons.



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