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IAEA deputy to return for more talks

The deputy chief of the UN nuclear watchdog is due to return to Tehran next week for more talks about claims that Iran has been studying how to make an atomic weapon, the student news agency ISNA reported yesterday.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deputy director general Olli Heinonen will hold talks in Tehran on Monday, just a week after his last round of meetings, an informed source told the agency.

“Olli Heinonen is coming to Tehran on Monday heading a technical delegation for a continuation of the talks whose first round took place on Monday and Tuesday,” the source said.

The focus of the talks will be “bilateral cooperation, the June report of the IAEA on Iran and how to solve the differences of opinion between Iran and the IAEA on the alleged studies,” it said.

That refers to information provided to the IAEA by some member states claiming that Iran may have been working on how to develop a nuclear weapon.

In June IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is due to deliver his latest report on Iran’s nuclear drive for the UN Security Council, which has imposed three sets of sanctions against Tehran.

The IAEA said on Wednesday that Heinonen reached an agreement with Iran in last week’s talks to examine the allegations.

However Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki then insisted that Iran has already answered all the UN atomic agency’s questions, including the allegations about the so-called “weaponization studies.”

In a closed-door briefing to diplomats at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on Feb. 25, Heinonen presented detailed evidence suggesting that Iran could have been studying how to use its nuclear technology to make a warhead.

Iran, which insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and aimed solely at generating energy, furiously denounced the claims as fake.
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