Iran yesterday agreed to allow expanded UN monitoring at the country’s nuclear sites, including at a new reactor, state TV reported, in a deal that could boost wider negotiations over Tehran’s atomic program.
The deal was struck during talks in Tehran with UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano as part of a parallel initiative to the broader efforts underway to ease Western concerns that Iran could one day develop nuclear weapons, an assertion Iran denies.
The promise to grant wider access to UN nuclear inspectors could help push forward talks between Iran and world powers, which failed to reach a deal over the weekend, but are scheduled to resume next week in Geneva, Switzerland.
Photo: AFP
The so-called “roadmap” described by Iran’s state TV would give the inspectors from the IAEA access to a key uranium mine and the site of a planned heavy water reactor, which uses a different type of coolant than regular water and produces a greater amount of plutonium byproduct than conventional reactors.
During the weekend talks in Geneva between Iran and six world powers, France insisted that more controls were needed on the planned reactor in the central Iranian city of Arak.
Plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons production, but separating it from the reactor byproducts requires a special technology that Iran does not currently possess.
Yesterday’s deal also could open room for even wider inspections, but no details were given.
“The practical measures will be implemented in the next three months, starting from today,” Amano said in a news conference in Tehran.
Noticeably absent from the announcement was mention of the Parchin military facility southeast of Tehran.
The agency has sought to revisit the site to investigate suspicions that explosive tests were carried out related to possible nuclear triggers. Iran denies the allegations, but has resisted opening the base.
The IAEA-Tehran talks were always a separate, but related, initiative to the international negotiations with Iran over its controversial nuclear program. Those broader negotiations ended without agreement this time around in Geneva.
Meanwhile, the Iranian press yesterday rounded on France and French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius, after reports emerged he scuttled a deal in the nuclear negotiations in Geneva over the weekend.
“France ruined its image in Geneva,” where talks between Iran and world powers sunk after Fabius expressed dissatisfaction with a draft text of an agreement, the English-language Tehran Times said.
According to the government-run daily, Iranian businessmen have decided to “review their relations” with their French counterparts and find “a more trustworthy partner.”
For Donya-e Eqtesad, the largest business daily, France was “the big loser of the Geneva talks.”
Reformist daily Etemad agreed in an editorial titled the “Non-diplomatic attitude of France,” saying: “Should there be an agreement, France will certainly be the losing party.”
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, the country’s chief nuclear negotiator, has refrained from naming France as the party preventing an agreement.
“It was possible to reach an agreement with most of the members of [world powers], but ... one of the delegations had a little problem,” he said on his Facebook page.
“Mr Fabius, we will not forget,” wrote the Haft-e-Sobh daily, claiming that Internet-savvy Iranians had stormed his Facebook page.
Additional reporting by AFP
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in