IRAN: The head of Iran's atomic energy programme has said the Islamic republic planned to allay international concerns about its nuclear programme which Washington says may be used to produce atomic bombs.
"I believe that we will remove the international concerns," Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation chief, Mr Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said after a weekly cabinet meeting.
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a June report cited a number of failures by Tehran in reporting its nuclear activities and is preparing a follow-up report to be released in September.
Mr Aghazadeh said IAEA inspectors had just concluded a number of inspections in Iran during which "Iran considered all the points" about which the agency was concerned. "All the necessary visits and sample-taking was done and I believe that there is no point which the agency will find ambiguous or have any question about," he said.
IAEA officials in the past have complained that they have been denied access to take environmental samples at some of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Iran has come under mounting international pressure to allow closer inspections of its sophisticated network of nuclear facilities, which include a uranium enrichment facility.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely geared to producing electricity and has so far resisted calls to sign the additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which would allow no-notice intrusive inspections.
An EU Commission spokesman, Mr Jean-Christophe Filori, said Mr Aghazadeh's comments only partially eased European concerns. "This is fine, but what we really expect is signature and ratification of the protocol. "
Mr Aghazadeh said Iranian officials had held "good" talks in recent days with an IAEA legal team about signing the protocol.
Iran has said that in return for signing the protocol it wants access to Western technology to develop its nuclear energy programme. Western diplomats have warned Iran it must sign the protocol unconditionally and not try to strike a bargain.
President Mohammad Khatami meanwhile has denied a newspaper report yesterday that his pro-reform government had approached US officials to ask for a resumption of talks which were broken off by Washington in May. - (Reuters)