UN body loses its cool over Iran
11 Sep 2012 3:03 AM GMT
The head of the UN atomic agency hit out on Monday at Iran's refusal to address allegations of nuclear weapons research and called on Tehran to allow access to a suspect military site ‘without further delay’.
‘Despite the intensified dialogue between the Agency and Iran since January 2012, no concrete results have been achieved so far,’ Yukiya Amano said at the start of an International Atomic Energy Agency board meeting.
‘This is frustrating because, without Iran's full engagement, we will not be able to start the process to resolve all outstanding issues, including those involving possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme.
‘We consider it essential for Iran to engage with us without further delay on the substance of our concerns,’ Amano said, according to the text of his speech released by the Vienna-based IAEA. The word ‘substance’ was in italics.
The IAEA has held several rounds of fruitless talks with Iran this year to press for access to sites and scientists involved in what it suspects has been a structured nuclear weapons research programme prior to 2003 and possibly since.
Iran denies conducting any such research and says that the documents backing up the IAEA's accusations, set out in a major report last November, are forgeries.
‘Despite the intensified dialogue between the Agency and Iran since January 2012, no concrete results have been achieved so far,’ Yukiya Amano said at the start of an International Atomic Energy Agency board meeting.
‘This is frustrating because, without Iran's full engagement, we will not be able to start the process to resolve all outstanding issues, including those involving possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme.
‘We consider it essential for Iran to engage with us without further delay on the substance of our concerns,’ Amano said, according to the text of his speech released by the Vienna-based IAEA. The word ‘substance’ was in italics.
The IAEA has held several rounds of fruitless talks with Iran this year to press for access to sites and scientists involved in what it suspects has been a structured nuclear weapons research programme prior to 2003 and possibly since.
Iran denies conducting any such research and says that the documents backing up the IAEA's accusations, set out in a major report last November, are forgeries.
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