Iran ready to resume IAEA talks: diplomats
TEHRAN, April 20 (MNA) – Iran says it is ready to resume talks with the UN nuclear watchdog two months after their last meeting, Reuters quoted Western diplomats as saying on Thursday.
Just days after Iran and six world powers restarted negotiations in Istanbul, the Islamic Republic delivered a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on holding new discussions with the UN body as well, the report said.
But Vienna-based diplomats said it did not mention the IAEA’s most pressing demand - that its inspectors be allowed to visit the Parchin military site southeast of Tehran, where the agency says nuclear-relevant research may have taken place.
Iran rejected requests by the IAEA delegations to inspect the Parchin military site during their visits to Iran from January 29 to 31 and February 21 to 22.
Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, handed over the letter to senior agency officials on Tuesday which said Tehran is “ready to resume the negotiations,” one Western diplomat said.
But, another envoy said, it “does not offer the agency access to Parchin.”
A third diplomat said, the IAEA may decide to travel to Tehran again in any case, before a meeting of the agency’s 35-nation governing board in early June to show that it is giving “dialogue a chance.”