VIENNA: New talks between the UN nuclear watchdog and Iran began yesterday, with the IAEA expected to push Tehran to allow its monitors access to a military base near the capital.
Western powers and Israel suspect Iran of trying to develop a bomb behind the veil of its civilian nuclear programme, a charge denied by Tehran which says it is developing civilian atomic power and making medical isotopes.
Yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief inspector Herman Nackaerts and deputy director general Rafael Grossi were meeting with Iran’s ambassador to the agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
The IAEA is especially interested in access to the Parchin military base near Tehran, where it believes suspicious explosives testing has been carried out.
The agency’s chief Yukiya Amano visited Iran on May 21 after promising talks in Vienna and said afterward that the two sides were close to a deal that would allow inspectors greater access to sites, people and documents tied to Iran’s nuclear programme. Earlier this week however, he hinted that a deal might still be a ways off.
“We need to hope that the Structured Approach agreement will be signed as soon as possible,” he said, although he noted that differences between the parties had ‘narrowed’.
“If we do not have access to the Parchin site or other people, information and sites, then…we cannot give assurance that all the activities in Iran have peaceful purposes,” he added.
The agency said in a report last month that new satellite imagery indicated ‘extensive activities’ at the base, which some experts see as signs of a clean-up.
Western diplomats urged Iran again this week to take ‘concrete’ steps to alleviate concerns over its nuclear programme, ahead of new talks with the so-called P5+1 group — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — in Moscow on June 18-19.
Talks between the six powers and Iran were revived in Istanbul in April and they met again in Baghdad in May, though little was achieved.
Barring progress in Moscow, an EU oil embargo against Iran will come into force on July 1, adding to a range of sanctions imposed under UN resolutions.
Iranian officials have repeatedly said in recent months that making, owning and using atomic weapons is ‘haram’ (forbidden) under Islam.
Iran’s regime also insisted Thursday that Western powers must recognise Tehran’s ‘right’ to uranium enrichment — which it says is to produce medical isotopes but which could also be used for a bomb — if talks in Moscow are to advance. — AFP