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Iran allows UN to inspect N-sites
Iran lifted its ban on visits to a nuclear facility by UN experts and will now allow them to inspect the site, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday. It also said Tehran was ready to answer key questions on past experiments that the international community fears could be linked to a weapons programme.

The IAEA — the UN’s nuclear monitor — said Iran promised the concessions earlier this week in a meeting between its officials and a senior delegation from the Vienna-based agency. .

Years of Iranian stonewalling have left the IAEA unable to ascertain whether Tehran is telling the truth in asserting that it has no nuclear weapons ambitions and that its atomic activities are meant strictly to generate power. Its refusal to cooperate with the agency was the trigger that prompted UN Security Council involvement last year, leading to two sets of sanctions.

Any decision by Iran to cooperate with the agency would thus be a major compromise on its part. As such, it could weaken a push by the United States and its Western allies on the council to impose new UN sanctions — even if Tehran continues to defy the council’s main demand that it freeze its uranium enrichment programme..

In talks between Iranian officials and IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards Olli Heinonen, “agreement was reached on the designation of new agency inspectors, a visit of agency inspectors to the heavy water research reactor at Arak by the end of July and the finalisation of the safeguards approach at the Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz during early August,” said a statement from the IAEA.

Posted by: Fred 2007-07-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=193402