US claims consensus on Iran inspections

Real political deadline to reach agreement on nuclear programme is July 9, official says

World powers negotiating an agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme have drawn up a system to give the UN nuclear watchdog access to all suspect Iranian sites, a senior US official said yesterday.

“We have worked out a process that we believe will ensure that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has the access it needs,” the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.

“The entry point isn’t [that] we must be able to get into every military site, because the US wouldn’t allow anybody to get into every military site, so that’s not appropriate.”

If Iran agrees, the system could mark a potential breakthrough in months of negotiations with the Islamic republic, which has refused to give the IAEA access to sensitive sites. “There are conventional purposes, and there are secrets that any country has that they are not willing to share,” the official said.

“But if in the context of this agreement... the IAEA believes that it needs access and has a reason for that access, then we have a process to ensure that that is given.”

Iran has denied seeking to arm itself with nuclear weapons, but the official said that the IAEA had an “institutional responsibility” to explore what the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme may have been.

Another senior US official yesterday dismissed suggestions that the US would cave in to Iran’s demands on an agreement.

The official said that if the US had wanted to make huge concessions, it could have done so long ago and that such criticism was “absurd”.

Meanwhile, US Vice-President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Colin Kahl was quoted in the Washington Post

REPORT as saying that the “real political deadline” for a final nuclear deal is July 9.

Kahl said that deadline took into account the 30-day review period that legislation provides for if the deal is submitted to Congress before July 9 and a 60day review period if submitted after July 9. The administration doesn’t want to give the Congress 60 days to review the deal and thereby further delay its implementation, he said.