Iran has not ruled out granting IAEA access to military sites: Iranian ambassador

TEHRAN, Feb. 29(MNA) – The Islamic Republic does not rule out giving the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the country’s military research sites, Iran’s ambassador to the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog said. Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh made the remarks in an interview with RT published its website on Tuesday in reply to a question about the fact that Iran rejected the requests by the IAEA delegations to inspect the Parchin military site, which is located southeast of Tehran, during their visits to Iran from January 29 to 31 and February 21 to 22. “First of all the group were not inspectors per se,” Soltanieh stated. “They were high officials of the agency from the legal, political, and technical departments,” he said, adding that the real purpose of the meeting was to “discuss the reality and framework for our future work.” However, Soltanieh said, “Iran is not ruling out access to any military sites, including Parchin,” but there are conditions that Iran wants the IAEA to meet. “There should be a morality, a framework, a term of reference about what exactly they are looking for. We have to have insurance that we will not repeat the same bitter experience that every day they just come and ask for the access,” he stated. Soltanieh also rejected the allegations that Iran is seeking to produce nuclear weapons and said that he was “one hundred percent confident” that “all this is wrong.” “I just want to tell you that last week, perhaps this is the first time I am telling you, we, in fact, offered the agency to go to another site… We offered, but the team was instructed by the director general (Yukiya Amano) to go back to Vienna. Therefore we don’t have any hesitation that every activity we have has nothing to do with nuclear weapons,” he stated, without mentioning the site. “Regarding allegations, which is another issue, we have made a historic concession now by inviting the agency’s high officials to come to Iran,” he said. “We have continued our work with the agency despite all the sanctions, the terror against our scientists, all resolutions,” he added.