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Iran invites IAEA envoys to visit nuclear sites
Reuters - 1 hour 24 minutes ago
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By Mitra Amiri and Fredrik Dahl
TEHRAN/VIENNA - Iran has invited envoys from China, the European Union and elsewhere to visit nuclear sites in a bid to show openness about its disputed atomic work ahead of new talks with major powers later this month.
Analysts saw Iran's invitation, to several ambassadors accredited to the U.N. nuclear watchdog in Vienna, as a "public relations" exercise which may do little to help resolve a long-running international row over Tehran's nuclear plans.
"However, it is a move away from all the confrontational rhetoric," Ali Ansari, an Iran expert at Scotland's St Andrews university, said.
But a senior Western diplomat dismissed it as Iran's latest "stunt" seeking to distract attention from its obligations under repeated U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on Tehran to suspend activity the West fears has military aims.
Iran's Foreign Ministry said the ambassadors were invited to travel to the country before Tehran and six world powers involved in diplomatic efforts to defuse the nuclear dispute are due to meet in Istanbul at the end of January.
They included representatives from some of the six powers -- China, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and the United States, ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference.
"They will possibly visit Iran and our nuclear facilities on January 15 and 16," he said.
He did not give details, but a diplomat in Vienna said Russia, China, Egypt, Algeria, Cuba and current EU president Hungary were believed to be among those invited. Britain said it was not invited.
Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency , the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear body, said the plan was for the group to travel to the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water reactor.
The two sites are at the heart of Iran's nuclear dispute with the West, which suspects the Islamic Republic is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies this.
"Ambassadors ... are invited to visit our nuclear sites, particularly in Natanz and Arak," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Reuters in Vienna. "This is in the line of our transparent nuclear policy," he said, adding that meetings with high-ranking Iranian officials would also be organised.
SANCTIONS PRESSURE
Tehran and the powers agreed in Geneva last month to meet again in Istanbul in late January. The Geneva talks were the first in more than a year and also the first since tougher U.N., U.S., and EU sanctions were imposed on Iran in mid-2010.
But the Geneva meeting made no substantial progress towards finding a solution to the nuclear row. Iran says its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful electricity production and has rejected international demands to curb it.
In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the country had received Iran's invitation, without saying if it would go.
Hungary's foreign ministry said it had also received Iran's invitation and that it was consulting EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and member states about Tehran's proposal.
The senior Western diplomat, who declined to be named, said Iran was undercutting the authority of the IAEA as the international body tasked with making sure countries do not divert nuclear material for military purposes.
"Rather than answering the agency's questions and giving its inspectors the requested access to people, plans and plants, they are inviting select nations' envoys to the IAEA to come and do the verification job the IAEA is meant to do."
The IAEA regularly visits Iranian nuclear sites including Natanz but it has voiced growing frustration at what it sees as lack of Iranian full cooperation with its inspectors.
Mehmanparast said Tehran's invitation "has once again shown the goodwill of our country regarding cooperation" with the IAEA and Iran's "peaceful nuclear activities."
Proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank called it a "propaganda ploy" aimed at deepening international divisions regarding Iran's nuclear programme.
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