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Iran asks envoys to nuclear sites - Business Day


By Mark Heinrich

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Reuters

VIENNA — Iran had invited envoys from developing nations accredited to the United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog to visit its nuclear sites in a show of openness about its atomic fuel programme, diplomats said yesterday.

Washington said Iran could regain trust only by co-operating fully with UN investigations into the nature of the programme.

Iran has had limited UN sanctions slapped on it over suspicions that its experimental efforts to enrich uranium are secretly geared to building atom bombs, rather than to generating electricity, as it maintains.

Iran has vowed to expand into industrial-scale fuel production, but has also pledged continued compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections while trying to rally diplomatic support in its stand-off with western powers.

Tehran had invited envoys from the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations attached to the IAEA, and heads of the larger Group of 77 states and of the Arab League office in Vienna, to visit early next month, an Iranian diplomat said.

“They have been invited to visit our nuclear installations from February 2 through the 6th,” the diplomat, who asked for anonymity, said on Tuesday. He did not elaborate.

A Non-Aligned Movement envoy to the IAEA said the invitation had been accepted. “It’ll be a publicity exercise for Iran — to display transparency, ” the envoy said.


Among those in the visiting delegation would be the Egyptian, Cuban and Malaysian ambassadors to the IAEA — all prominent voices in the Non-Aligned Movement, to which Iran belongs, diplomats said.