AFP: Iran refuses to go beyond its treaty obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prove the peaceful aims of its nuclear energy programme, a senior official said Thursday. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei “has no right to demand anything that goes beyond international rules”, said Hossein Mussavian, spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team. AFP
TEHRAN – Iran refuses to go beyond its treaty obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prove the peaceful aims of its nuclear energy programme, a senior official said Thursday.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei “has no right to demand anything that goes beyond international rules”, said Hossein Mussavian, spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team.
ElBaradei said Wednesday that Tehran must carry out “transparency” measures that allow widespread visits by IAEA inspectors beyond what is required under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“These statements are very surprising and we ask him to correct them,” Mussavian told Iranian state television.
“We are prepared to show active cooperation, total transparency, but our cooperation with the agency must remain within the NPT, its safeguard clauses, within the additional protocol, and not outside this framework,” he said.
ElBaradei said Iran was a “special case” since its nuclear programme “has been clandestine for almost two decades and it is difficult that we can come to a conclusion (about weapons work) and provide assurance without full cooperation, full openness, full transparency on the part of Iran.”
The IAEA is asking the Iranians “to go out of their way, not just to play by the book but to be more transparent to allow us to do everything we want to do, frankly in terms of interviewing people, in terms of having access to documents, in terms of making transparency visits to facilities.”
