IAEA to revisit Iranian nuclear site next week

Vienna, July 24: Iran agreed to let inspectors from the United Nation's nuclear watchdog revisit its heavy-water reactor site early next week in a push by the UN for more transparency in Iran's disputed nuclear programme.

Diplomats said the accord, which came in a second round of negotiations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency to clarify the scope of Iran's atomic activities, was a bid by Tehran to head off more painful UN sanctions.

Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's deputy director in charge of nuclear safeguards, said Iran agreed to let inspectors return to the Arak heavy-water complex, which is under construction, on Monday or Tuesday -- four months after Iran cut off IAEA access there in protest at existing sanctions.

Inspectors want to check that Iran is adhering to design data for the reactor given earlier to the IAEA. Diplomats say the risk of Iran using the reactor to process weapons-grade plutonium would rise in the absence of UN monitoring.

Iran says it is wants to refine uranium only for electricity so it can export more of its oil wealth. But it has been slapped with two sets of sanctions for defying UN resolutions demanding it suspend all efforts to produce nuclear fuel.

European diplomats said last week Western powers had quietly shelved efforts to toughen penalties against Iran until September to see whether the talks would bring an end to Iranian stonewalling of UN inquiries since 2003 and defuse a volatile standoff between Tehran and Western powers.

Limited Concession

The inspection trip to Arak next week will be a one-off gesture, not a resumption of regular IAEA visits for design verification which Iran has yet to restore, diplomats said.

After meeting Iran's deputy nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeedi in Vienna, Heinonen said the next step would be to clear up other IAEA questions, such as past Iranian experiments with plutonium and the extent of its uranium enrichment programme.

Vaeedi said he would resume talks with Heinonen in Tehran on August 20: ''We had a good discussion and constructive progress in this meeting (today). Now we are going to move forward in the best mood and with the best effort,'' he said.

Neither man took questions from reporters.

Analysts said Tehran could be forthcoming on some points of IAEA inquiries but hesitate on others to retain bargaining chips in a drawn-out strategic poker match with Western powers.

Iran's answering some IAEA questions seemed geared to eroding support for sanctions and creating political capital to keep at least some of its enrichment programme, they said.

But Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned the United States to back off from broader penalties or talk of a last-resort war, saying this would provoke only confrontation and ''the end of a search for a solution to the nuclear issue''.

''We think the renewed efforts to cooperate with the IAEA have contributed to strengthening political will (in the West) towards finding a negotiated solution,'' he said in remarks published in France's Le Monde newspaper.

Among the issues the IAEA says Iran must come clean on are the origin of traces of highly enriched -- or weapons-capable -- uranium found on some equipment, experiments with plutonium, and the status of Iranian research into advanced centrifuges that can enrich three times as fast as the model Iran now uses.

Reuters>