IAEA officials: All materials at Natanz under control

March 1, 2009 - 0:0

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asqar Soltanieh said on Friday the agency officials have confirmed that all materials at Natanz uranium enrichment facilities are under their control.

Soltanieh made the remarks in reaction to some media reports about the declared amount of low-enriched uranium at Natanz.
He said that officials of the UN nuclear watchdog discussed the issue on Tuesday.
Meantime, an IAEA spokesperson said in a statement earlier that Iran is cooperating well with the United Nations nuclear inspectors, dismissing misleading allegations raised by the western media on Iranian nuclear program following the latest IAEA report on Iran.
In a statement last Sunday, IAEA Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming clarified the IAEA’s position on the misleading and naive articles in the U.S. and European press concerning Iran’s production of Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU), stressing that all Iran’s nuclear activities and materials are accounted for, that Tehran’s nuclear program includes no component which could worry the IAEA and that Iran has good cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.
“IAEA has no reason at all to believe that the estimates of LEU produced in the (Natanz) facility were an intentional error by Iran. They are inherent in the early commissioning phases of such a facility when it is not known in advance how it will perform in practice,” Fleming clarified.
Elsewhere, Soltanieh denied reports about Iran having problem in processing uranium at UCF in Isfahan and providing the necessary amount of yellowcake for the site.
Referring to the Friday statement of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) members of the IAEA, the Iranian official noted the group’s demand for UN nuclear watchdog not to politicize the technical issues of Iran’s nuclear program.
They also underlined Iran’s right to use peaceful nuclear technology and criticized any country which wants to prevent Iran from its rights, he added.
Soltanieh said that NAM members had pointed to Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA on resolving the remaining issues and the agreed modality plan and urged implementation of the agency’s safeguards in the country be normalized.