Iran might let diplomats visit suspected nuclear site

Iran indicated on Monday it might allow diplomats visiting Tehran for this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit to go to the Parchin military base, which U.N. nuclear experts say may have been used for nuclear-related explosives tests.

When asked about the possibility, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh said: "Such a visit is not customary in such meetings...However at the discretion of authorities, Iran would be ready for such a visit," the Iranian government-linked news agency Young Journalists Club reported.

The tentative offer was made just three days after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) again requested access to Parchin for its inspectors at a meeting in Vienna.

Iran is hosting the NAM summit, which ends on Friday. 

Any visit to Parchin by NAM representatives would do little to calm Western concerns or those of the IAEA whose talks with the Iranians ended on Friday without agreement. 

"Any tour the Iranians conduct for visiting NAM officials would be nothing more than a very, very bad publicity stunt," a senior Western diplomat in Vienna told Reuters. "It is the IAEA that should have been given access to Parchin."

The U.N. body suspects that Iran has conducted explosives tests in a steel chamber at Parchin relevant for the development of nuclear weapons, possibly a decade ago.

Citing satellite pictures, Western diplomats say they believe Iran in recent months has been cleansing the site where the experiments are believed to have taken place of any evidence of illicit nuclear activity.

The IAEA is voicing growing concern that this would hamper its investigation if it ever gained access to Parchin.

Last week diplomatic sources said Iran had covered the building believed to house the explosives chamber with a tent-like structure, fuelling suspicions about a clean-up there.

"Now that Iran is in the final stages of cleansing the site, no one should be surprised that officials in Tehran now talk about a possible visit," the Western diplomat said.

Iran says Parchin, a vast complex southeast of Tehran, is a conventional military facility and has dismissed allegations about it as "ridiculous".

Monday's Iranian media report did not make clear whether the NAM diplomats would be able to visit the location in Parchin which the IAEA wants to see or only other areas of the complex.

Akhoundzadeh said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is due to attend the NAM summit later in the week, might be able to visit Iran's nuclear sites.

U.N. officials were not immediately available for comment. 

In early 2011, Iran invited Vienna-based diplomats to tour its nuclear facilities, an offer dismissed by Western states as a ploy by Tehran to appear to show openness while still refusing to give IAEA experts the kind of access they need.

 

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