UN nuclear watchdog visits defiant Iran

Officials from the UN atomic watchdog, the IAEA, visited Iran on Sunday to discuss Tehran’s suspect nuclear drive, amid fury in the Islamic republic at a looming EU oil embargo.

The three-day International Atomic Energy Agency mission, which was to end Tuesday, was looking into information suggesting Iran’s was researching nuclear weapons.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the six members of the IAEA delegation “are allowed to visit any of our nuclear sites that they request.”

He told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit, that he was “very optimistic” about the IAEA visit.

He reiterated that “Iran is never, ever after nuclear weapons.”

Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA’S chief inspector leading the team, said before leaving Vienna that “we hope Iran will engage with us on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program,” adding that dialogue was “overdue.”

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, described the visit as a “test” for the UN agency.

If the IAEA officials were “profes- sional,” then “the path for co-operation will open up,” he said, according to the website of the official IRIB state broadcaster.

“But if they deviate and become a tool (of the West), then the Islamic republic will be forced to reflect and consider a new framework,” he said.

Iran is increasingly furious at Western measures aimed at making it halt uranium enrichment.

It has defiantly stepped up enrichment at a new bombproof bunker in Fordo. And Salehi on Sunday reiterated Iran’s plans to put a 20-per cent enriched nuclear fuel plate into its Tehran research reactor.