Europe

Home page

Europe

West prods Iran to speed up cooperation with IAEA inquiry

04 June 2014 21:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Iran faced Western pressure on Wednesday to speed up its promised cooperation with a long-stalled U.N. nuclear watchdog investigation into suspected atomic bomb research by Tehran, something the Islamic state denies, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The United States, the European Union and others welcomed at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency signs that Iran has begun engaging with the IAEA inquiry but they also made clear Tehran must do much more to fully address their concerns.

U.S. officials say it is vital for Iran to resolve the IAEA's questions if parallel negotiations between Tehran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia on long-term accord are to succeed. Those talks aim to set verifiable, civilian limits to Iran's nuclear activity and end punitive international sanctions imposed on Tehran.

The IAEA has long been investigating suspicions that Iran may have coordinated efforts to process uranium, test explosives and revamp a ballistic missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead. Iran says the allegations are false but has offered to help clarify them since pragmatist Hassan Rouhani took office as Iranian president last year.

Iran's envoy to the IAEA made clear his view that this would take some time: "These issues are very complicated. Everything should be done in due course," Reza Najafi told reporters.

The EU - which groups three of the six powers seeking to negotiate a settlement to a decade-old dispute with Iran over its nuclear program - noted that "some" progress had been made in the separate talks between Iran and the IAEA.

But, the 28-nation bloc added in a statement to a quarterly meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation governing board, "We call on Iran to provide all the relevant information to the agency, to address fully the substance of all of the agency's concerns and to accelerate its cooperation with the agency."

Canada's ambassador to the Vienna-based IAEA put it more bluntly, saying Iran was using a kind of "salami-slicing way" in its dealings with the U.N. watchdog. "We are definitely of the view that Iran is moving too slowly to address these long-standing questions," Mark Bailey told Reuters.