Washington: As in the case of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday (November 11) said there is "no evidence" so far on Iran building a nuclear bomb as asserted by the US Government.

However, Iran manufactured small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium as part of a nuclear programme that operated in secret for 18 years, the UN nuclear watchdog said in a new report.

The report harshly criticised Iran for deliberately hiding evidence of its nuclear programme from international inspectors and for numerous "breaches" of its nuclear treaty obligations.

A top Iranian official acknowledged in Tehran that his country's programme had breached IAEA rules but they were only "minor" in nature.

"The failures that Iran has been reproached for are minor and are only in the order of grams and milligrams, while in the past some countries had problems with larger quantity of plutonium," Iran's representative to IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted as saying by international media.

The IAEA also said it would keep investigating the Bush Administration's claim that Iran has sought to build an atom bomb, and added that given Iran's "past pattern of concealment, it will take some time before the Agency is able to conclude that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes".

PTI