Employees of Qatar Airways gather outside their office building in Doha after earthquake tremors were felt in the afternoon yesterday. (SHAIVAL DALAL)
By Mobin Pandit
DOHA: A little over three months after GCC leaders expressed concern over Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant posing a threat to their region as it fell in a seismic zone, a powerful quake hit the area around the facility yesterday, causing fear in the entire region that felt its powerful aftereffects.
The plant is, though, safe — as claimed by Tehran — and so are the many multi-billion dollar energy installations in the GCC states. The question being asked here, however, is how long can one expect it to resist tremors, located as it is in a sensitive seismic zone.
Kuwait had raised the issue of the devastation the Bushehr plant could cause in the entire region if it were hit by a powerful tremor, at the last GCC Summit held in Manama late last December.
Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, with the GCC secretary-general, Abdul Latif Al Zayani, had said at a press conference after the Summit that member-countries wanted a say in Iran’s talks with the ‘Five Plus One’ to raise the issue of the Bushehr plant and Tehran’s overall nuclear programme.
He had earlier told London-based Arabic daily, Sharq Al Awsat, in an interview that the GCC states were working jointly at the global level to put diplomatic pressure on Iran on the issue of the Bushehr plant that had recently begun operating.
“The plant poses a grave threat to the region’s safety and environment. Iran has the right to use nuclear power but it must abide by global safety standards. We must keep our region safe from the Bushehr plant and Iran’s nuclear programme,” Al
Khalifa said.
Meanwhile, media reports from Saudi Arabia suggest that a GCC-wide agency based in Bahrain and tasked with protecting the environment is urging Iran to give it a detailed report on the Bushehr power plant after a powerful tremor measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale struck close to the facility yesterday.
“We are coordinating with the Centre in Bahrain,” Hussein Al Qahtani, spokesman for the Saudi Meteorology and Environment Protection Authority, was quoted as saying by Al Yaum.com.
“We are concerned and we have been talking about the danger from the Bushehr plant in the eventuality of a quake for a long time…It can cause huge damage to the region.”
Colonel Ali Al Qahtani, from the Civil Defense department of Saudi Arabia’s eastern provinces, said their operation room received a large number of calls from panic-stricken people who said they had felt strong aftereffects of the tremor in neighbouring Iran. The head of the Geology Department at King Saud University, Dr Abdullah Mohamed, said such quakes as the one that hit Iran yesterday had occurred in 2003, 2006 and 2008. “But yesterday’s was the most powerful one. It had more intensity and that was why people in the GCC region felt its aftereffects,” he said.
According to him, all energy installations in the area were safe and if more aftereffects are felt, they wouldn’t be as intense.
However, Aljazeera.com said that western diplomats based in the GCC region have expressed deep concern about the safety of the Bushehr plant.
Saudi’s national seismology centre said its records showed the tremor in Iran struck at 2.52pm local time (Qatar time is the same). Its epicenter was 85 km south-east of Bushehr and the quake was 12 km deep and measured 6.4 on the Richter scale.
Saudi cities like Jubail, Dammam and Al Khibar are all located less than 300 km from the epicenter. Meanwhile, Qatar’s Meteorology Department said it was gathering data and would release an official statement today.
