IAEA to Visit Iran to Discuss Inspection Framework

International Atomic Energy Agency officials are expected to visit Iran next week to discuss rules for governing future inspections at the Natanz enrichment facility and other Iranian nuclear sites, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday (see GSN, July 27).

“Technical inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Iran on August 6 to work on the regulations under which inspections of Iranian nuclear sites will be carried out,” an unnamed Iranian official told the Iranian Student’s News Agency.

IAEA and Tehran officials are expected to focus on inspection arrangements for the Natanz enrichment facility, the Isfahan uranium conversion plant and other nuclear sites in Iran (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28).

Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator on Thursday blamed delays in the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant on Russian “political problems,” dismissing Russian claims that Iran failed to deliver payments for the project, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported (see GSN, July 26).

Hasan Rohani said Russia was “due to start (operating) this power plant in 2005,” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had later promised it would be ready by 2006, a deadline again postponed to 2007.

The “problem is on the Russian side,” Rohani said, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.  “The Russians are not doing their work.”

Rohani said the plant might have become operational already if the U.N. Security Council had not become involved in the international response to Iran’s nuclear program and instead left management of the nuclear crisis to the International Atomic Energy Agency (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 27).

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