Iran remains willing to negotiate for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to enjoy unfettered access but, in the meantime, it will scale back its cooperation with the UN watchdog, Iran's representative to the world body said yesterday.
"We have decided to fulfill our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and not beyond that," Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's representative to the agency, said.
"It doesn't mean that we are rejecting the additional protocol or not prepared to talk on that," Salehi added.
The additional protocol would provide IAEA inspectors with unrestricted access of any site they wished to visit in Iran.
On Monday night, Salehi had told Iranian state television that Iran had given the inspectors more rein than was required under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. It would now scale back that cooperation, he said.
The move was Iran's response to the watchdog's demand that the country prove that its nuclear program is peaceful by Oct. 31. The Tehran government has criticized the deadline resolution as unacceptable and "politically motivated."
In Vienna yesterday, a spokesman for the IAEA, Mark Gwozdecky, said the body had heard "nothing official from the Iranian government."
"We've put everything in place to make it possible for Iran to comply with the board of governors resolution," Gwozdecky said, referring to the deadline. "We hope that Iran will do its part in providing the accelerated cooperation that will be necessary for us to resolve the outstanding questions around the nuclear programs."
After Salehi announced the decision to reduce cooperation, a Western diplomat said the move did not bode well.
"If Iran has decided to do only the minimum, it doesn't sound like the accelerated cooperation the IAEA had called on it to provide," the diplomat said Monday.
But Salehi said yesterday that such a conclusion was a wrong interpretation of his comments.
In August, Iran allowed inspectors to visit a site it deemed non-nuclear -- the Kalay-e-Electric Co in west Tehran -- after they were turned away two months before when they came to take environmental samples. Iran allegedly had tested centrifuges, which are used to process uranium, at the site.
Salehi seems to be saying that Iran's latest position is to confine its cooperation with the IAEA to the letter of existing agreements -- under which environment sampling at Kalay is not mandatory -- while at the same time negotiating its acceptance of the additional protocol.
The US has accused Iran of running a clandestine nuclear weapons program and wants the IAEA to declare Tehran in violation of the treaty.
Tehran insists its nuclear programs are designed only to generate electricity, particularly after its oil reserves run dry.
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