Senior U.N. inspectors arrived in Iran on Monday to push for transparency about its disputed nuclear program, a day after Tehran responded defiantly to tightened EU sanctions by halting oil sales to British and French companies.
Iran denies Western allegations that it is covertly seeking the means to build nuclear weapons and has again vowed no nuclear retreat in recent weeks, but also voiced willingness to resume negotiations with world powers without preconditions.
The five-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, led by its global inspectorate chief Herman Nackaerts, planned two days of meetings in another effort to extract answers from Iran regarding intelligence suggesting its declared civilian nuclear program is a facade for developing bombs.
Nackaerts said on departure from Vienna that he wanted “concrete results” from the talks. His delegation was expected to seek, among other things, to question Iranian nuclear scientists and visit the Parchin military base believed to have been used for high-explosive tests relevant to nuclear warheads.
But Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi dampened speculation about such visits when he told the student news agency ISNA that the IAEA officials would not be going to any nuclear sites. “No. Their work has just begun,” Salehi said.
