ID :
282106
Sun, 04/21/2013 - 07:58
Auther :

UN nuclear watchdog team on Iran faces reshuffle

TEHRAN,April 21(MNA) – Two senior UN nuclear watchdog officials who have been leading talks with Iran will leave this year, Reuters reported on Friday. Western diplomats blame Iranian stonewalling for the failure to come to an agreement, a charge Tehran denies, and some say the UN agency may soon need to reconsider its tactics. A new round of talks could be held in May. Iran denies Western allegations that it is seeking to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons, saying its atomic activities are aimed at generating electricity. “I think that we were approaching a potential re-set anyway. It is clear that Iran has been able to stall the process,” a diplomat in Vienna said. Rafael Grossi, assistant director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been named Argentina’s envoy to the Vienna-based IAEA, a job he is expected to start in the summer, a diplomatic source said on Friday. The IAEA last month said a senior Finnish nuclear official, Tero Varjoranta, would succeed Herman Nackaerts when he retires in the autumn as chief nuclear inspector in charge of monitoring Iran’s atomic activities and other sensitive issues. Nackaerts, a Belgian, and Grossi have headed the IAEA’s team of experts who have met nine times with Iranian envoys since early 2012. “Their departure deprives the agency of the two officials who have spent the most time in the last two years talking with Iranians at senior levels,” said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. Analysts and diplomats stressed, however, that it is IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, who steered the agency into a tougher approach to Iran, who decides policy. He secured a second four-year term in March, signaling continuity. “An administrative reshuffle by the agency below Amano will likely have little impact on the Iran talks,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank. The IAEA-Iran talks are separate from, but still closely linked to, broader diplomatic negotiations between Tehran and six world powers aimed at resolving the decade-old dispute peacefully. The last round of IAEA-Iran negotiations, in February, yielded no breakthrough. Another session in May is a “possibility,” a diplomat in Vienna said on Friday. Iranian state television, citing a source close to the Iranian negotiating team, denied a media report that the UN agency and Tehran had already agreed to meet in mid-May. Amano this month said that some of the differences between the two sides were still “quite important”. He said any deal with Tehran must enable effective IAEA verification work. The IAEA has called on Iran to sign and implement a structured approach document to resolve the outstanding issues and has stated that gaining access to the Parchin military site, which is located southeast of Tehran, is a priority for the UN nuclear watchdog. The UN nuclear watchdog has claimed that Iran might have been trying to sanitize the Parchin site of any incriminating evidence of explosive tests that would indicate efforts to design nuclear weapons. However, Iran has dismissed the claim, calling it “baseless”. Tehran has rejected requests by IAEA delegations to inspect the Parchin site and has made it clear that access to the site would not be possible before an agreement is reached on the structured approach document.

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