VIENNA: Nuclear talks between Iran and the UN atomic agency failed yet again yesterday, as a top US diplomat said she expected the IAEA to report Tehran to the UN Security Council soon.
The IAEA announcement came just as EU foreign policy chief was due to meet Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in Istanbul for the first time since failed six-party talks in April.
“We could not finalise the structured approach document that has been under negotiation for a year and a half,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief inspector told reporters.
“Our best efforts have not been successful so far,” Herman Nackaerts said, adding that no new date for another meeting had been set.
Iran’s envoy in the more than eight hours of “intensive” talks in Vienna, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, was characteristically more upbeat, saying that the next meeting would see a deal finalised.
“The aim of this ... is to bridge the gaps towards a conclusion of the text by the next meeting,” he told a joint press briefing.
The IAEA was pressing Iranian officials to grant access to sites, documents and scientists involved in Tehran’s alleged efforts to develop atomic weapons, mostly before 2003 but possibly ongoing.
Iran says the IAEA’s findings are based on faulty intelligence from foreign spy agencies such as the CIA and Israel’s Mossad—intelligence it complains it has not even been allowed to see.
Nine rounds of talks since the publication of a major IAEA report in November 2011 have produced no breakthrough.
AFP
