IAEA says assessing claims on new Iran atomic site

Reuters: The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday his agency was assessing a report by a dissident Iranian group that it had evidence of a new secret underground atomic site in Iran.

VIENNA (Reuters) – The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday his agency was assessing a report by a dissident Iranian group that it had evidence of a new secret underground atomic site in Iran.

The dissident group last week said the information came from a network of sources inside Iran affiliated with the exiled opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), a guerrilla movement opposed to the Islamic Republic’s government.

Iran denied it had a covert uranium enrichment facility.

“We are aware of this information through media reports and we are now assessing this information, but at this stage we do not have anything more to share with you,” Yukiya Amano, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told a news conference in Vienna.

He said the IAEA had not received prior information from the dissident group about its assertions.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)