A team from the UN nuclear watchdog led by its second-in-command
held talks in Teheran yesterday seeking details about Iran's offer
to answer unresolved questions about its disputed nuclear
program.
Iran has offered to draw up an "action plan" to address
suspicions that its nuclear program has military goals. Teheran
insists its aims are purely civilian but faces the prospect of more
UN sanctions for failing to convince world powers.
Shortly after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team
arrived, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Islamic Republic
would not halt its nuclear work, once again snubbing UN calls for
Teheran to suspend uranium enrichment activity.
"The process of the installment (of centrifuges) might slow down
or speed up... but no one should expect us to give up our rights
and stop its process," the official IRNA news agency quoted
Ahmadinejad as saying.
IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei has said the transparency offer,
combined with what the IAEA has said was a slowdown in Iran's
uranium enrichment work, had raised hopes of defusing the row.
IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen and other agency officials
began talks in Iran's capital with an Iranian team led by Javad
Vaeedi, the deputy to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali
Larijani, IRNA reported.
Heinonen was expected to "negotiate with Iranian nuclear
officials about designing a framework for ways to solve the
remaining issues in Iran's nuclear case", IRNA reported. Results
were expected to be announced this evening, it added.
The United States and its European Union allies wonder whether
Iran's offer of transparency is anything more than an exercise to
buy time and avert further UN measures.
The IAEA wants explanations for traces of highly enriched
uranium found on some equipment. It also wants to know more about
experiments with plutonium, the status of research into an advanced
centrifuge able to enrich uranium three times as fast as the model
Iran now uses, and documents showing how to cast uranium metal for
a bomb core.
(China Daily via agencies July 12, 2007)
