The chief of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Monday Iran was still
resisting investigation into its atomic program, but he welcomed a big-power
offer of incentives to Tehran to resolve the crisis.
Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Aliasghar
Soltaniyeh pulls some papers out of his briefcase at the beginning of a
board of governors meeting in Vienna's U.N. headquarters, June 12, 2006.
[Reuters] |
Iran earlier ruled out any
compromise on its right to enrich uranium, without rejecting outright the
package offered by six major nations on condition it halts its work on nuclear
fuel.
Tehran restated its position just before the International Atomic Energy
Agency's governing board began meeting in Vienna.
"It (is) clear that the agency has not made much progress in resolving
outstanding verification issues," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said
in a keynote speech to the board.
"I remain convinced that the way forward lies through dialogue and mutual
accommodation," he said.
Diplomats said the IAEA would debate Iran but pass no resolutions, to avoid
any diplomatic upset while Tehran considers its response to the big-power
initiative.
"Iran's view on the nuclear fuel cycle has been announced ... we have
obtained this technology, it is our obvious right and we do not negotiate over
our obvious nuclear rights," Iranian government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham
said in Tehran.
President Bush has said Iran has weeks, not months, to decide whether to
accept the deal.
"The G8 foreign ministers' meeting at the end of the month will obviously be
a time to see where we stand with Iran," a State Department official said on
Monday.
Ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet on June 29-30
ahead of a G8 summit on July 15-17.
The official, who asked not to be named, said the IAEA board meeting was not
a diplomatic deadline for the negotiations.
The nuclear dispute intensified in February when the IAEA referred Tehran to
the U.N. Security Council over its history of hiding atomic research and
obstructing IAEA investigations.
Last week the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China
offered Iran incentives to stop making nuclear fuel. Tehran has repeatedly vowed
to pursue such work.