As sanctions loom, Iran grants more IAEA visits

Iran has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to set up a tighter inspection regime at one uranium enrichment site, the IAEA said Monday, as world powers were drawing up new sanctions against the Islamic state, dpa reported.

But the IAEA's latest Iran report showed little progress had been made on other issues.

"In particular, Iran needs to cooperate in clarifying outstanding issues which give rise to concerns about possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme," IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano wrote in the document issued to the UN Security Council and IAEA member countries.

After boosting uranium enrichment to 20 per cent in February, Iran finally let the IAEA conduct additional, unannounced visits to its plant in Natanz from mid-May, and let inspectors install additional seals and cameras.

"In this case, the regime is very tough," a senior diplomat familiar with the IAEA's work in Iran said.

However, Iran has continued to enrich uranium in spite of UN Security Council resolutions demanding a halt of that work. The report said Iran had produced 2,427 kilogrammes of low-enriched uranium.

Experts assess this is more than enough for two nuclear weapons, if the material were processed further, but Iran's leaders deny they have any military plans for their nuclear programme.

In addition, the numbers of centrifuges enriching uranium at a level below 5 per cent has increased from 3,772 to 3,936 between late January and April 24. The total number of installed centrifuges stands at 8,528.

The 20-per-cent enrichment process line was turning out some 100 grammes of the product per day, the senior diplomat said.

Iran has also failed to provide the IAEA with the location of additional enrichment facilities it has admitted to building, despite its obligation to do so.

In a first reaction to Monday's IAEA report, Iran's IAEA envoy termed the report as "boring and repetitious."

"Unfortunately the IAEA general director has just repeated boring issues he had raised before, including various irrelevant technical details which would just lead to confusion, misunderstanding and ambiguities." Ali-Asqar Soltanieh told ISNA news agency.

"Iran will not give in to (IAEA) demands which are unjustified, politically motivated and go beyond (Iran's) legal commitments," he added.

The IAEA envoy said that as Iran no longer implements the IAEA Additional Protocol, the IAEA inspections could only be made within the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Iran would only give the IAEA information which was solely within Tehran's NPT commitments.

The IAEA Additional Protocol obliges IAEA member states not only to allow snap inspections of nuclear sites by the IAEA but also to provide the UN nuclear watchdog information about other nuclear projects.

"The essence of the report is that after seven years, the IAEA once again announced that no deviation has been witnessed in Iran's nuclear projects with regards to forbidden secret military programmes," Soltanieh said.

Earlier this month, permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States agreed on a draft for new sanctions that would ban Iran's nuclear activities abroad.

The measures would also target arms imports, missile-related activities, banking, and activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Monday's IAEA report did not touch on Iran's plan to store some of its enriched uranium in Turkey as a sign of good-will, while Russia and France would produce fresh fuel for a medical-use reactor in Tehran.

So far, there has been no joint response by Russia, France and the US, the three countries that initially proposed a similar deal last October.