New setback with 'no progress' on IAEA-Iran deal
AUSTRIA: The UN nuclear watchdog and Iran failed Friday to agree a
deal allowing greater access to Tehran's contested nuclear programme, a
setback as world powers prepare for crucial talks in Moscow.
"There has been no progress," IAEA chief inspector Herman Nackaerts
announced late Friday after all-day talks with Iran's envoy to the
agency Ali Asghar Soltanieh and IAEA deputy director general Rafael
Grossi.
"This is disappointing," he said, reading out a prepared statement at
a joint briefing with the Iranian ambassador.
The International Atomic Energy Agency had come to the meeting "in a
constructive spirit and with the desire and intention of finalising the
paper" but Iran had imposed new conditions on a deal, Nackaerts said.
A date for a new meeting between the two sides had yet to be set, he
added.
The agency has been seeking a deal with Iran that would allow greater
access to sites, people and documents tied to Tehran's nuclear programme.
After a visit to Iran on May 21, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano had said the
two sides were close to a deal.
However, Soltanieh appealed Friday for "time and patience" and vowed
that Iran was "ready to remove all ambiguities and prove to the world
that our activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes." "Let Iran
and the IAEA do their work," he said, adding that "there is no obstacle"
to an accord being struck at a later date.
The planned accord would include agency access to the Parchin
military base near Tehran, where the IAEA believes suspicious explosives
testing was carried out before 2003 and possibly after that.
On two visits to Iran, in January and February, the UN nuclear
watchdog said it was denied access to the site.
Meanwhile, new satellite imagery indicated "extensive activities" at
the base, which "could hamper the agency's ability to undertake
effective verification" of the site, the IAEA said in a report last
month.
In other words, experts spoke of a clean-up, pointing to the razing
of two small buildings and what looked like a water run-off. But
Soltanieh dismissed this as politicisation by Western countries.
"Whoever raises the issue of Parchin or other sites which is going to
be dealt with in this framework... is just creating a negative
environment, and this is not advisable and this is not conducive," he
told journalists.
Western powers and Israel suspect Iran is trying to produce a nuclear
bomb, but Tehran insists it is merely developing atomic power for
civilian purposes.
Earlier this week, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano again warned Iran that it
needed to do more to alleviate international concerns over its nuclear
drive.
"Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation to enable the agency
to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear
material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all
nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," he said.
AFP |