The UN's nuclear watchdog Thursday called for Tehran to increase it cooperation regarding its nuclear facilities.
But the Iranian representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) immediately rejected the call for wider inspections prompted by a report to the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors which said Iran had failed to respect international inspection agreements.
But, Thursday's IAEA statement clearly did not match US aspirations for the IAEA to add to the pressure building against Iran by issuing a resounding condemnation of its nuclear program.
"You have to take what you can get," said a senior western diplomat, adding the IAEA, caught between the hardline US position and objections from Iran and non-aligned countries, had come up with a compromise which was still "highly acceptable" to Washington.
According to AFP, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the IAEA had reached a "broad sense" at the board meeting that opened Monday in Vienna "that made it clear that Iran should accept (a new protocol for inspections) without any conditions".
He said "safeguards have to be implemented in a very comprehensive, very conspicuous, very rigid manner to build confidence. They need to be completely transparent and the issues before us should be resolved as soon as possible."
Even without agreeing to new protocol, Iran should "give us full access to all the locations, all the sites we would like to visit," he said. (Albawaba.com)
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