Iran and IAEA begin new round of talks in Vienna
VIENNA: Following a diplomatic frenzy in New York, Iran was due to hold talks with the UN atomic agency, their 11th such meeting but the first since Hassan Rouhani’s election.
The International Atomic Energy Agency regularly inspects Iran’s nuclear activities and every quarter its reports outline a continued expansion in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.
Western countries want the IAEA to keep a closer eye in order to better detect any attempt by Iran to “break out” and produce enough highlyenriched uranium for a nuclear bomb.
But the subject of yesterday’s talks is the IAEA’s wish for Iran to address allegations that before 2003, and possibly since, it has conducted research work into making an actual nuclear weapon.
The agency has failed in 10meetings since early 2012 to press Iran to grant it access to personnel, sites and documents related to these activities, set out in a major November 2011 report by the IAEA.
The allegations were based in large part on information provided to the IAEA from spy agencies like the CIA and Mossad, intelligence which Iran rubbishes and complains that it has not even been allowed to see.
The sites include the Parchin military base where the IAEA wants to probe claims that scientists conducted explosives tests that would be “strong indicators of possible nuclear weapon development”.
Western countries have accused Iran of literally bulldozing evidence at Parchin, and IAEA head Yukiya Amano said in June that heavy construction work spotted by satellite means “it may no longer be possible to find anything even if we have access”.
Providing some hope that the negotiators might be 11th time lucky is that under Rouhani, Iran has been sounding considerably more conciliatory than under his more hard line predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It will also be the first such gathering involving Iran’s new envoy to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, who arrived in Vienna earlier this month professing a “strong political will” to engage. — AFP