World
Institutional
links
Welcome back on
26 -29 August,
ONS 2008
Bridging
the energy gap
is ONS 2006 theme,
from 22-25 August,
in Stavanger, Norway
Petroleumworld
Business
Partners:
Centre for
Global Energy
Studies
  |
UN nuclear chief presses Iran leaders on cooperation
TEHRAN
Petroleumworld.com, Jan 14, 2008UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei met Iranian leaders on Saturday on a visit aimed at persuading Tehran to intensify cooperation with his agency over its contested nuclear programme.
ElBaradei has already pressed top Iranian nuclear officials to provide swifter answers to questions about areas of ambiguity in the history of its atomic drive, which the West fears could be aimed at producing a bomb.
On his first trip to Iran in one and a half years on Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general met hardline senior nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He also held his first ever meeting with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a rarity for any visiting head of an international organisation, Iranian media reported, without giving details of the talks.
In talks on Friday with the head of the Iranian atomic energy organisation, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, ElBaradei urged Tehran to be quicker in answering the IAEA's questions about remaining areas of doubt in its atomic drive.
"I discussed with Mr Aghazadeh how we can work together and accelerate the pace of our cooperation to clarify all outstanding issues before my report (to the IAEA board of governors) in March," ElBaradei told reporters.
Jalili, a close ally of Ahmadinejad who replaced the more moderate Ali Larijani in October, told ElBaradei that Iran would continue to insist on its right to nuclear technology.
"We need to find an appropriate means to normalise the current situation and we need to take as the basic principle that Iran is not an exception," Jalili said.
Ahmadinejad, who has vowed never to make the slightest concession in the nuclear crisis, charged that Western powers were seeking to put pressure on the IAEA.
"Some countries think that the IAEA was created just to implement their own policies, which is unjust and abnormal," he said.
Despite a four-year probe into Tehran's atomic drive, the IAEA has so far been unable to determine whether the programme is peaceful. The aim of its cooperation with Tehran is to draw the investigation to a conclusion.
The United States is maintaining its pressure at the Security Council for a third set of UN sanctions against Iran but Tehran is hoping its cooperation with the agency will stave off further punitive measures.
As part of a cooperation deal agreed in August, Iran and the IAEA have already held talks over three areas of past doubts -- uranium particle contamination, Iran's past experiments with plutonium, and its use of uranium-enriching P1 and P2 centrifuges.
Vienna-based diplomats said talks would now turn to the possible military use of Iran's nuclear technology, the last and possibly most significant item on the list.
A US intelligence report that said Iran halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003 appears to have momentarily taken the heat out of the atomic crisis, but Washington still wants new UN sanctions.
World powers have repeatedly called on Iran to freeze uranium enrichment -- which can be used to make either nuclear fuel or a bomb -- but Iran has insisted its programme is peaceful and that it has the right to master the full fuel cycle.
ElBaradei last visited Iran in April 2006, when he notably failed to win any concession from Tehran on the question of enrichment.
His latest trip to Iran coincided with a Middle East tour by US President George W. Bush, who this week declared his belief that "Iran is a threat to world peace."
Even after the release of the intelligence report, the enmity between the two foes was highlighted last week when Washington accused Tehran of harassing its ships in the entrance to the Gulf.
A senior Israeli defence official said Israeli leaders told Bush during his visit that they still see the Islamic republic as a threat to global security.
"After deep scrutiny, the intelligence services reached the same conclusion -- Iran is striving to obtain nuclear weapons," Amos Gilad told public radio.
Story by Stuart Williams from AFP
AFP 121521 GMT 01 08Copyright© 2007 Petroleumworld. All rights reserved.
Your feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best Viewed with IE 5.01+
Windows NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels