Iran has allowed top UN nuclear monitors to visit an advanced centrifuge development site for the first time in a gesture of transparency about its disputed atomic drive, diplomats familiar with the matter said.
One of the diplomats, close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the IAEA was nearing the end of an inquiry into Iran's nuclear activity and cited concern a new big power move to increase sanctions on Tehran could hurt the process.
Six world powers agreed in Berlin on Tuesday to the outline of a new UN sanctions resolution although diplomats said the draft lacked punitive trade measures Washington had sought. The West suspects Iran, which hid efforts to enrich uranium from the IAEA until 2003, suspect Iran's declared quest for nuclear-generated energy is a front for bombmaking. Iran denies this and has defied UN resolutions demanding a nuclear halt, instead expanding an underground enrichment plant.
After a rare Tehran visit by IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei on January 11-12, the agency said Iran agreed to settle remaining questions in the long stalled inquiry within four weeks and also handed over some information about efforts to develop "a new generation" of centrifuges able to refine uranium much faster.
On Wednesday, diplomats familiar with IAEA-Iran relations told Reuters ElBaradei and his safeguards chief, Olli Heinonen, also visited a Tehran site where a centrifuge to replace Iran's current outmoded, breakdown-prone model is being developed.
"This was a research and development lab for their new design of P-2 centrifuge that they were able to see," the first diplomat said, in what was the first such visit since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disclosed the activity in 2006.
UN inspectors had long demanded such access under the IAEA's Additional Protocol to assess how close Iran may be to mastering enrichment technology, and the scope of the current programme to verify it is not for illicit military ends. But Iran stopped permitting wider-ranging inspections beyond its few declared nuclear production sites in 2006 in retaliation for big power moves to adopt initial sanctions then."This visit to this new R&D centrifuge lab is in effect implementing the Additional Protocol. Of course this (access) needs to be formalised by Iran but this was a voluntary measure on their part covered by the Protocol," the diplomat said.
The diplomat, who like others asked not to be named in exchange for discussing politically sensitive and confidential information, said ElBaradei would detail his visit and results of the inquiry in a report due out around February 20.
But senior UN inspectors striving to wrap up the inquiry into Iran's shadowy nuclear past are concerned that any broader sanctions resolution could prompt Iran to stonewall anew. "The Iranian reaction will be interesting to this resolution. It certainly will not be helpful, and it might be detrimental for their cooperation in finishing up the (inquiry). We're at a very delicate juncture," the diplomat said.
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