VIENNA — The head of the UN's nuclear
watchdog said Monday he would continue to be "firm and fair" with
Iran, a day after clinching a deal over access to surveillance equipment at
Iran's nuclear facilities.
اضافة اعلان
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Director General Rafael Grossi was speaking to reporters at the start of a
meeting of the agency's board of governors at a delicate moment for
international diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue.
On Sunday he returned from a visit to Tehran
where he hammered out a deal to enable the IAEA to service its surveillance
equipment there and to ensure footage recorded on it is preserved.
The footage will be handed over to the IAEA
if and when there is an agreement between Iran and world powers on the revival
of the 2015 deal, also known as the JCPOA.
Talks to revive the deal are currently
stalled, with Iran warning it may be months before they restart.
Little progress has been made on another
issue relating to long-standing questions the IAEA has had about the previous
presence of
nuclear material at undeclared sites in Iran.
The agency has said in numerous reports that
Iran's explanations about the material have not been satisfactory.
Asked whether now was the time to be tougher
with Iran on the issue, Grossi replied that "from day one I have had an
approach with Iran which is firm and fair".
He said he hoped a "clear
conversation" with the government of new ultraconservative President
Ebrahim Raisi would take place on a return visit to Iran "very soon"
and would bring progress.
'Eyes
wide shut'
Raisi replaced moderate president Hassan
Rouhani, whose landmark achievement was negotiating the JCPOA.
Grossi admitted that Raisi's government had
"firm views on matters related to the nuclear program" but said that
nevertheless "we must engage".
"These things are not going away. We
need to address them together," he added.
In the run up to this week's board of
governors meeting there had been speculation that Western countries may push
for a resolution censuring Iran but a diplomatic source told AFP that the deal
struck over the weekend had "in principle removed" that possibility.
Iran's conservative press meanwhile on Monday
celebrated the weekend's deal.
The Javan daily said it meant "Iran had
not revealed its secrets to the agency", while the Vatan-e-Emrouz
newspaper titled its coverage "Eyes wide shut".
Asked how difficult it would be to
reconstruct information once the IAEA gains access to the footage, Grossi
admitted that "it's something that has to a certain extent never been done
before but it's not ... beyond the capacity of my technical teams."
However he confirmed that the agency still
has access to footage "as often as required" from sites such as
Iran's enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow.
Read more Region and World
.jpg)
.jpg)
