Iran will decide whether or not to accept snap inspections of its nuclear sites after an upcoming visit by legal experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said.
Kharazi said late on Tuesday that Iran, which is under increasing international pressure to act, is expecting the arrival of the experts it has invited ”in the next few days”.
”After these people come to Iran and we listen to their reasons and justifications, then we will decide whether to sign the IAEA’s additional protocol,” he said.
The international community, suspicious that Tehran has a secret weapons programme, is pressing it to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allowing the IAEA to carry out thorough inspections of the country’s installations without prior declaration.
On July 28, IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming said, ”A first IAEA team of judicial experts will go in the first week of August on a 48-hour mission to explain how the protocol will work if Tehran signs.”
A second team will carry out routine inspections ahead of a report on Iran’s nuclear facilities by the IAEA due to be released on September 8, she added.
Earlier this month, European Union (EU) foreign ministers expressed their ”increasing concern” over Iran’s nuclear programme and demanded Iran’s ”unconditional” acceptance of the additional NPT protocol.
The EU, which is negotiating a key trade pact with Iran, said it would review its cooperation with Tehran when the report is published.
Iran denies the allegations, spearheaded by its arch-foe the United States, that it is covertly developing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme which Washington says it does not need, being rich in oil and gas.
Tehran has also stressed it has no intention of pulling out of the NPT, which without the protocol only allows the Vienna-based United Nations (UN) body to pay pre-arranged visits to declared sites. Last week, President Mohammad Khatami accused the United States of seeking to overthrow the Islamic regime and of using the nuclear weapons allegations as a pretext.
Iran’s representative to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, warned on Sunday that if the protocol was not signed, there was a real danger the agency might decide at its September meeting to refer Iran’s case to the UN Security Council, as threatened by Washington.
Tehran has given a little ground in recent weeks, stressing it had not said it would never sign the protocol, and playing down its insistence on Western states giving the assistance in developing a civilian nuclear industry which it says the NPT requires them to do.
At its last meeting in June, IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei reported to the board that Tehran had not fully respected the NPT by failing to inform the agency of some of its nuclear activities, including uranium imports in 1991.
Salehi rejected concerns among hardliners in Iran that the additional protocol would allow IAEA inspectors to meddle in Iranian internal affairs.
”We are currently in a situation in which the protocol can help us settle some problems and close the political file opened on our nuclear activities,” he said in reference to US-led criticism.
Israel, which is in range of Iran’s latest ballistic missile, urged Washington on Tuesday to take all steps possible to block Iran from developing nuclear arms, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met US President George Bush, Israeli public radio reported. – Sapa-AFP