Talks With U.N. on Nuclear Inspections Went Well, Iran Says

Iran’s official news agency said Wednesday that Tehran held “positive and constructive” talks with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog on snap inspections of nuclear facilities that Washington suspects may be used to make atomic bombs.

An International Atomic Energy Agency team arrived in Tehran on Monday to discuss the possibility of Iran’s signing an additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which would allow inspectors to carry out more intrusive, no- notice checks of nuclear sites.

Iran’s signature on the additional protocol is seen as crucial to allaying international concerns that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions may go beyond its stated aim of generating electricity from nuclear power.

President Mohammad Khatami stressed Wednesday that Iran’s nuclear program was entirely peaceful.

“I emphasize that Iran is totally against any form of weapons of mass destruction and denounce as false and groundless the claims that Iran is producing nuclear weapons,” the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted him as saying in a meeting with senior Iranian officials.

Though Washington has led the chorus of international concern about Iran’s nuclear program, the European Union, Russia and Japan have also urged the Islamic Republic to provide greater assurances that the program will not be diverted into military uses.

In a June report, the IAEA criticized Tehran for failing to report a number of activities related to its nuclear program. Iran has pledged to cooperate fully with the agency, which is due to release another report on Iran in September.

While pro-reform government officials and lawmakers argue that signing the protocol would ease international pressure on Iran, hard-liners say it would give carte blanche to Iran’s enemies to spy on the country.

“The notion that accepting the additional protocol will exculpate Iran is an infantile and amateurish supposition,” Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hard-line Kayhan newspaper, told the ISNA student news agency Tuesday.

“The only thing which can foil the plot hatched jointly by America, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency against Islamic Iran is our withdrawal” from the nonproliferation treaty.

Officials from Iran’s pro- reform government have said Tehran has no intention of pulling out of the nonproliferation treaty.

Meanwhile, Pakistan on Tuesday denied a Los Angeles Times report this week that said it shared expertise with Iran that could help Tehran develop nuclear weapons. The Times reported that Iran appeared to be in the late stages of building a nuclear bomb and had sought help from scientists from countries including Pakistan. The story quoted a Middle Eastern intelligence official as saying Pakistan’s role in helping Iran develop a nuclear program was “bigger from the beginning than we thought.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry called the report “completely false [and] irresponsible.... Pakistan’s commitments, affirmed at the highest level, that it would not export any sensitive technologies to third countries remain unquestionable.”