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Iran daily blasts UN official
21/04/2008 15:46 - (SA)
Tehran - A top UN nuclear official arrived in Tehran on Monday for talks about claims Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, greeted by a lacerating attack on his visit from Iran's leading hard line daily.
Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) deputy director general, is to hold talks over allegations Iran may have been studying how to design a nuclear weapon, the Vienna-based watchdog has said.
He was to start talks with Iran's deputy national security chief Javad Vaeedi, the state broadcaster reported.
But in a sign of the sensitivity of the talks, Iran's leading hard line daily Kayhan launched a withering personal onslaught against Heinonen and his intentions.
"This trip is to complete a joint Israeli-US trick to provide phoney proof on Iran's nuclear activities," said an editorial signed by chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari, who is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
New evidence 'troubling'
In a closed-door briefing to diplomats at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on February 25, Heinonen presented detailed evidence suggesting that Iran could have been studying how to use its nuclear technology to make a warhead.
Western diplomats present at the meeting subsequently said the new evidence of alleged "weaponisation studies" was troubling.
Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and aimed solely at generating energy, at the time furiously denounced the claims as fake.
"He (Heinonen) opened the first act at the (IAEA) board of governors, in a play written by Israel and directed by the US. And now during his trip here he will perform the second act. What is surprising is why our officials agreed to his trip," said Kayhan.
The chief aim of Heinonen's visit appears to be obtaining responses from Iran over the weaponisation studies and help the IAEA draw its investigation into the Iranian nuclear programme to a close.
Despite more than four years of intensive investigation, the IAEA has never been able to confirm that the nuclear drive is peaceful.
Showing goodwill
Iran has stuck to a conspicuously different characterisation of the visit than that of the IAEA, saying it is a routine trip as part of the co-operation between Tehran and the nuclear watchdog.
The official Irna news agency quoted an informed Iranian source as saying that for Tehran the issue of the alleged weaponisation studies is "finished" and its assessment has already been handed to the IAEA.
"Iran is doing this negotiation to show its goodwill," the source was quoted as saying.
Iran's refusal to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment operations - which the West fears could be used to make a nuclear weapon - has already led to three sets of UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran.
The weaponisation studies alleged to have been used by Iran include a document on the casting and machining of uranium metal into the shape of warheads.
- AFP
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