Diplomats: U.N. Nuclear Watchdog to Visit Iran End of January
A high-level U.N. nuclear agency delegation will visit Iran in late January to try to clear up allegations of a covert weapons program and soothe tensions between Tehran and the West, diplomats said Friday.
The visit for talks led by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief inspector Herman Nackaerts would last from the 28th through the first week of February, a Western diplomat told Agence France Presse.
Another envoy said the trip, two months after an IAEA report on Iran took suspicions to a new level that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons, also said it would "likely" be from January 28, although it was not yet definite.
The delegation would include alongside the Belgian Nackaerts, the IAEA's senior legal official Peri Lynne Johnson, an American, and Rafael Grossi, the Argentine deputy director general of the Vienna-based watchdog, the diplomat said.
"The aim of this mission is to try to get answers once and for all to all the questions raised by the IAEA's report in November," one of the diplomats told AFP.
Iran denies seeking atomic weapons, saying its program is peaceful, but Western countries strongly suspect otherwise and the U.N. Security Council has slapped four rounds of sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Ali Larijani, the influential speaker of Iran's parliament, said Thursday during a visit to Turkey that his country stood ready for negotiations with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany.
In its November 8 report, rubbished as "baseless" by Iran, the IAEA had said it was able to build an overall impression that Tehran "carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device."
The analysis was based on what the agency called broadly "credible" intelligence provided by several unnamed countries, as well as its own information.
Source: Agence France Presse
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