Iran questions atomic agency findings

Iran has rejected a charge by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it had failed to honour its nuclear safeguards agreement.

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President Khatami: ‘Willing
to answer all questions’

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran said Iran could provide “answers” to all the agency’s concerns.

  

“We have done nothing which would violate our commitments” on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the spokesman said.

 

The spokesman questioned reports earlier Friday which said that the IAEA had failed to give Tehran’s nuclear programme a clean bill of health.

  

A United Nations diplomat quoting from an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report by Mohamed ElBaradei said that Iran had been found to have violated the NPT.

 

Speaking on condition of anonymity the diplomat said Iran had “failed to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material, the subsequent processing and use of that material and the declaration of facilities where the material was stored and processed”.

 

But he said the report added that Iran had begun to correct the situation, and the IAEA was in the process of verifying the correctness and completeness of the Iranian declarations.

  

The report, filed to member-states ahead of a 16 June IAEA meeting in Vienna, comes amid mounting pressure from Washington, which suspects Tehran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme

 

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami denies US allegations that his country is developing nuclear weapons, saying it is only meeting energy needs.