A visit to Iran by UN inspectors probing the country’s suspected nuclear weapons activities failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Tehran denying access to a key military site, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said yesterday.
“Intensive efforts were made to reach agreement on a document facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran’s nuclear program,” the IAEA said in a statement. “Unfortunately, agreement was not reached on this document.”
The team requested access both during this month’s visit and during a first trip late last month to the Parchin military site, near Tehran, where it believes explosives testing has been carried out, but Iran “did not grant permission,” it said.
“It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin during the first or second meetings,” IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano said in the statement. “We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached.”
The statement gave no further details and did not say whether another visit was planned.
Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, was quoted by Iranian news agency ISNA as saying the talks had been intensive and covered “cooperation and mutual understanding between Iran and the IAEA.”
“These negotiations will continue in the future,” Soltanieh said.
The high-ranking IAEA team led by Herman Nackaerts, the Vienna-based agency’s Belgian chief inspector and its Argentine No. 2 Rafael Grossi, was scheduled to arrive back in Vienna later yesterday.
The visit was aimed, the IAEA had said, at clarifying all “outstanding substantive issues” surrounding Tehran’s nuclear program, in particular what it called “possible military dimensions.”
The trip was also seen as an important precursor to a possible resumption of talks between Iran and the United States, China, Russia, France, the UK and Germany, which broke down in Turkey 13 months ago.
Mark Hibbs, analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said before the visit that it represented “a last chance for Iran to make a significant gesture.”
A watershed report from the IAEA in November said that Iran had carried out activities in a number of areas “relevant to producing” a nuclear weapon.
The report said that its information suggested that Iran tested in “a large ... containment vessel” at Parchin high explosives in experiments thought to be relevant to designing a ballistic missile payload.
Since the report’s publication, the US and the EU have ramped up sanctions on Iran’s oil sector, and speculation has grown that Iran’s archrival Israel might launch air strikes, possibly even this year.
Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, has announced the halt of oil sales to the UK and France — sending the price of oil soaring — and has defiantly trumpeted advances in its nuclear program.
Iran, whose economy has been hit hard by the recent ramping up of sanctions, denies wanting nuclear weapons, insisting its program, including the enrichment of uranium, is for producing energy and treating cancer patients.
The UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran because of Tehran’s repeated failure to declare nuclear sites and materials to the IAEA, calling on it to suspend uranium enrichment.
The IAEA delegation’s findings are likely to be included in a report by Amano expected to be circulated to diplomats in Vienna later this week, which will be presented to the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors on March 5.
A majority of board members could vote to censure Iran, which would further raise international pressure on Tehran.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the