The Associated Press, June 1, 2008 – France’s defense minister said Sunday that evidence indicated Iran was still pursuing a military nuclear program, and he urged Tehran to prove otherwise by opening its program to greater international scrutiny.

Herve Morin said his country believes every nation has the right to develop a nuclear program for power generation because it is key to development and to countering global warming _ but, he said, “we advocate transparency and control.”

Iran should demonstrate “through total opening of its installations that (it) is not conducting nuclear programs with military purposes and goals,” Morin told reporters on the sidelines of a security conference in Singapore.

Tehran ended all voluntary cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, including allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, in February 2006 after being reported to the U.N. Security Council.

Ever since, Iran has limited its cooperation to only its obligations under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The treaty does not require Iran to allow short-notice, intrusive inspections of its facilities.

Morin said that all the “information we have collected proves that they have not dropped the idea of getting on with their (military) program.”

He said French government data show that Iran continues to “carry on with sensitive activities.”
Morin cited Iran’s display of the Shihab-3 missile during its national day parades, and said it was obviously a ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

“You don’t develop a ballistic missile to carry conventional warhead. It doesn’t make operational sense,” he said.

The IAEA recently said in a report that Iran might be withholding information needed to establish whether it had tried to make nuclear weapons.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt enriching uranium, a process that can be used to generate electricity or nuclear arms.