Iran-IAEA Start New Round Of Talks

Vienna, Aug 25, IRNA – Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday began a new round of talks. Senior Iranian and IAEA envoys in the one-day talks focused on a structural approach to remaining thorny issues on Iran’s peaceful nuclear issue. Iran’s permanent IAEA envoy Ali-Asghar Soltanieh and IAEA chief inspector Herman Nackaerts were the negotiating parties on parts of Iran and the IAEA respectively. Iran has always reiterated its commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as well as rules and regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It has also announced that it is trying to find proper mechanisms to ease the legal and technical concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear drive, but meantime hopes that the country's cooperation with the IAEA would not be influenced by political objectives. Tehran has always asked the IAEA and the western countries to drop political allegations against Iran's nuclear program and deal with Tehran's dossier from technical and legal perspectives. Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed the West's demand as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA's questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities. Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries./end