Iranian officials and a team from the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) started a fresh round of talks on Monday in
Tehran to resolve remaining issues about Tehran's nuclear work, the
official IRNA news agency reported.
The new talks are expected to focus on questions about the
source of contamination with weapons-grade uranium found by IAEA
inspectors at Tehran's Technical University.
In August, Iran and the IAEA reached an agreement for Tehran to
clarify the outstanding ambiguities over its nuclear program.
The UN nuclear watchdog has stated that issues about Iran's
P1and P2 centrifuges for uranium enrichment and its experiments
with plutonium had been answered by Tehran.
Director General of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei last month said
in his latest report on Iran's nuclear program that Tehran had
provided "sufficient" cooperation to the agency to clarify its open
issues related to uranium enrichment activities.
But the report also pointed out that, contrary to the demand of
the United Nations Security Council resolutions, Iran still did not
suspend its uranium enrichment related activities.
The United States and some other Western countries have been
alleging that Iran may try to develop atomic bombs under a civilian
cover. But Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful
purposes only.
Two rounds of UN Security Council sanctions have already been
imposed on Iran for failing to heed a UN demand that it halt
uranium enrichment.
(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2007)