Iran says will remove concerns on nuclear aims

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN: The head of Iran’s atomic energy programme said on Wednesday the Islamic Republic planned to allay international concerns about its nuclear programme which Washington says may be used to produce atomic bombs.

“I believe that we will remove the international concerns,” Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting. The UN’s nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a June report cited a number of failures by Tehran in reporting its nuclear activities and is preparing a follow-up report to be released in September.

Aghazadeh said IAEA inspectors had just concluded a number of inspections in Iran during which “Iran considered all the points that the agency was concerned about”. “All the necessary visits and sample taking was done and I believe that there is no point which the agency will find ambiguous or have any question about,” he said.

IAEA officials in the past have complained that they have been denied access to take environmental samples at some of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran has come under mounting international pressure to allow closer inspections of its sophisticated network of nuclear facilities, which include a uranium enrichment facility. Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely geared to producing electricity and has so far resisted calls to sign the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Aghazadeh said Iranian officials had held “good” talks in recent days with an IAEA legal team about signing the protocol. Additional protocol: He said that while most of Iran’s concerns about signing the protocol had been addressed in the talks both the IAEA and Tehran felt a further meeting would be needed to discuss the issue in the near future. Asked whether Iran would eventually sign the protocol and allow the snap inspections, —Reuters

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