Iran, Reversing Ban, Will Open Reactor to U.N. Inspectors

July 14, 2007
Iran, Reversing Ban, Will Open Reactor to U.N. Inspectors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

United Nations nuclear inspectors, banned by Iran earlier this year from visiting a heavy-water reactor, will be allowed to inspect it before the end of July, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

The agency, which is based here, said Iran had also agreed to answer questions on past experiments that could be linked to a weapons program.

For years Iran has failed to cooperate with the agency on the agency’s terms, leaving it unable to ascertain the truth of Iran’s claims that it has no plans to build nuclear weapons and that its atomic activities are meant strictly to generate energy. Its refusal to cooperate or stop enriching uranium prompted the United Nations Security Council to pass two sets of sanctions.

Any Iranian decision to cooperate could weaken a push by the United States and Western allies on the Council to impose new sanctions.

In talks between Iranian officials and the agency’s deputy director general, Olli Heinonen of Finland, “agreement was reached” to allow an inspection of the heavy-water reactor at Arak by the end of July, the agency said in a statement.

The two sides also agreed on how “to resolve remaining issues regarding Iran’s past plutonium experiments.”

Access to the Arak reactor is an important part of any survey of Iran’s nuclear activities because it could produce plutonium once completed, sometime in the next decade.

Because plutonium and enriched uranium can be used in warheads, the Security Council demanded a stop not only to enrichment but also to construction at Arak.

The Council also sought full openness about the work at Arak; more than two decades of nuclear activities went undetected until disclosed four years ago by an Iranian dissident group.