DUBAI/VIENNA: UN nuclear inspectors arrived in Iran yesterday to visit a uranium mine, Iranian media reported, as part of a cooperation pact meant to help allay international concern about the country’s nuclear programme.
Today’s planned inspection of the Gchine mine in southern Iran will be the first by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at this site since 2005. Allowing the UN nuclear agency — which is investigating allegations that Iran has carried out atomic bomb research — to go to Gchine was among six concrete steps Iran agreed to under the November 11 agreement with the IAEA.
“The inspectors have arrived in Tehran to make a visit to Gchine mine,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.
The IAEA was not immediately available for a comment. Its director-general said last week that the Gchine visit would take place “in coming days”. The IAEA-Iran deal is separate from a Nov. 24 breakthrough accord between Iran and six world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear programme in return for a limited easing of sanctions that have battered its economy. That agreement took effect on Januray 20.
But both accords signalled a rapid improvement in Iran’s troubled ties with the outside world, made possible by the election of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as president on a platform of ending Tehran’s international isolation.
Iran has moved quickly since Rouhani took office in August to improve relations with the West after years of confrontation under his hardline predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran denies accusations it is seeking to develop atomic bombs. As the first step to be implemented under the Iran-IAEA agreement, UN inspectors went to the Arak heavy-water production facility in December, a plant that is linked to a nearby reactor under construction that the West fears could yield plutonium for nuclear bombs once operational.Reuters
