Salehi: IAEA cannot make demands beyond safeguards
2010/11/26, MNA
Nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi has said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can not make any demand from Iran that goes beyond the IAEA safeguards agreement including an inspection of Iran’s heavy water nuclear facility.
“Cooperation with the agency has been defined. The agency cannot make any demand beyond the safeguards agreement… (but) we are ready to cooperate if they make demands within the framework of the agency’s safeguards agreement” Salehi, director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (IAEO), told the Mehr News Agency on Thursday in response to a demand by the agency to inspect Iran’s heavy water nuclear plant.
According to the Associated Press, IAEA director Yukiya Amano in his newly released report called on Tehran to implement the additional protocol to allow for more comprehensive inspections of the nation’s nuclear program including the heavy water facilities. Iran stopped voluntary implementation of the protocol in 2007.
Salehi said the inspection of Iran’s heavy water nuclear facility is not part of the agreement, explaining that the heavy water is covered under an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the implementation of the additional protocol is not compulsory.
He went on to say that the Westerners suppose that they can impose their demands on Iran through pressure, but the experience has proved that such pressures have failed to force Iran into shifting its nuclear policy.
Amano’s report a step forward
Commenting on Amano’s recent report on Iran’s nuclear program, Salehi said the report has taken a more positive stance on Iran’s nuclear issue compared with the previous ones and it can be regarded as “a step forward,” but it does not mean that the report is faultless.
“We feel that the agency has taken a positive approach,” he said.
“In the meeting that we had with Amano in September, we openly expressed our views, and we thank the agency’s director general for taking into consideration some of our views, and we are hopeful that the next reports would be more objective and impartial,” he explained.
Iran displeased with disclosure of its nuclear information
Elsewhere in his remarks, Salehi expressed displeasure over the disclosure of information about Iran’s nuclear program in Amano’s report
“Announcing the number of centrifuges is an unprincipled action and we object to this action,” he said.
The IAEA should only inspect the nuclear facilities and not give out any details like “how many kilograms of uranium or how many centrifuges we have,” he added.
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