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Copyright © 1999, by the Middle East Data Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
Prime Minister Stepashin was able to report some progress to Vice President Gore during their July 28 meeting in the contentious area of Russia's nuclear transfers to Iran, Russian sources told The Iran Brief. But Stepashin's assurances were not enough to get the U.S. to lift sanctions against two nuclear institutes, NKIET and Mendelayev, that were quietly imposed last November and announced by the White House on Jan. 12. ("Nuclear Exchanges Intensify, TIB 2/8/99).
The U.S. imposed sanctions on the two firms for providing assistance and technology to Iran that could be useful to its clandestine nuclear weapons program, which includes a requirement to acquire the means to produce weapons grade nuclear fuel, either through enrichment of uranium or through the reprocessing of spent reactor fuel.
According to the Russian side, the U.S. had promised to lift sanctions against Mendeleyev in May, but was not convinced by Russian assurances that the Iranians studying nuclear physics at the Moscow-based institute had been thoroughly isolated from programs of use to developing weapons-grade fuel. "Stepashin left empty-handed," the Russian sources said.
The D. Mendeleyev Institute of Chemical Technology specializes in designing graphite materials for plutonium production reactors. Civilian power plant operators might have a requirement to learn how to handle graphite rods used in reactor operation, but the U.S. feared they could also gain access to design information that would advance Iran's program to obtain weapons material.
On August 5, the head of Russia's National Security Council, Vladimir Putin, had a thirty-minute telephone conference with his U.S. counterpart Sandy Berger to discuss the Russian government investigation of NKIET, the sources said.
Putin, who doubles as the head of the domestic spy agency, FSB, is rumored in Moscow to be the next in line to become Russian Prime Minister, perhaps as early as late August or early September. President Yeltsin is said to be upset with Stepashin because he has failed to close down judicial investigations into the financial affairs of his family and close confidants, including Russian magnate Boris Berezovsky.
Putin told Berger that NKIET's parent organization, the Ministry of Atomic Energy, MINATOM, had fired
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