Azerbaijan, Baku, March 05 / Trend D.Khatinoglu
The deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Mostafa Dolatyar told Trend that the Gordian knot in solving the Iranian nuclear issue is the unwillingness to accept Iran's rights in a non-proliferation Treaty framework.
General Director of the Institute of Political and International Studies, Dolatyar added that when Iranian rights are accepted according to NPT, Iran will totally oblige with its commitments, but the problem is their avoidance of seeing Iran as a responsible member by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the framework of the NPT.
Western countries, alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) doubt Iran's nuclear goals, accusing it of probable military dimensions of its nuclear programme.
So far, the UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of resolutions on Iran, asking it to halt its uranium enrichment programme and accept the additional protocol of a Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
IAEA issued its latest report on Iran's nuclear programme on Feb.26 claiming that the country has stepped up uranium enrichment.
Iran's 3.5 per cent enriched uranium reserves reached 95.4 kg, while its 19.75 per cent-enriched uranium reserves increased up to 5,441 kg, Mr Soltanieh said.
Dolatyar said that Iran does not have any problem, "We suspended enrichment uranium for two to three years (from 2003-2005) and have done whatever was needed to solve the problems surrounding Iran's nuclear programme."
Iranian Foreign Ministers deputy Dolatyar added that they (the western countries) are not mentally ready to accept reality.
Enriching uranium increases the proportion of uranium atoms that can be split by fission. When uranium is produced, it consists of about 99.3 per cent uranium-238 and 0.7 per cent uranium-235. As uranium gets enriched, the density of isotope 235 raises. For making nuclear warhead uranium it should be enriched above 90 per cent.
The latest round of talks between Iran and the world's major powers (P 5+1) were carried out in January 2011 in Ankara, without any result.
IAEA inspectors, including two military experts had earlier traveled twice to Tehran to inspect Iran's nuclear program. Iranian officials said that inspecting nuclear facilities are not in Agency inspectors' remit, but after finishing the second round of talks, IAEA chief Yukia Amano announced that Iran had not allowed inspectors to visit the Parchin military complex.
In November 2011, IAEA Chief Yukia Amano said during a report that he suspected that Parchin was the site where explosives relating to nuclear weapons had been recently tested.