'Iran may join nuke club by 2007'

The five major powers with nuclear arsenals -- the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France -- are all signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which binds them to guarantees monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

India and Pakistan, which have both openly tested nuclear bombs, and Israel, which is thought by experts to have nuclear weapons as well, are not subject to IAEA inspections because they have not signed the treaty.

Analysts remain divided as to whether North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons have yielded concrete results.

Iran claims that its nuclear programme is entirely oriented towards generating energy and says it is willing to accept inspections, but the United States in particular has asserted that Iran is trying to buy time to build a bomb and has demanded that it give up all its uranium enrichment activities.

The United States would like the IAEA to refer the case of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons prog-ramme to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Benn Tennenbaum, an expert at the Federation of American Scientists, thinks that "it will take several years" for Iran to develop a bomb if they only have the gas centrifuge programme that is known to be in place. Even if it is fairly-well monitored, he said, "they still have the ability to divert some material," in which case it ould take "a few years" to gather enough high-grade uranium to make a bomb.

"If they have a separate program, they would probably do it very quickly," he added, noting that such a program would not be subject to inspection.

"The IAEA is not a judge of the Non-Proliferation Treaty," expla-inel Mark Gwozdecky, an IAEA spokesman. "We monitor countries' activities -- if there are compliance issues, they are referred to the UN Security Council," he added.