IAEA to press arms issue in Iran talks

VIENNA—The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s top investigator will launch talks in Tehran on Monday to press for Iranian answers to Western intelligence alleging that Iran covertly studied how to devise atomic bombs.
Olli Heinonen raised a diplomatic stir in February with a power-point presentation indicating links in Iran between projects to process uranium, test explosives and modify a missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead. Iran has dismissed the intelligence as baseless, forged or irrelevant. But the U.N. nuclear watchdog is seeking substantive explanations, rather than denials lacking evidence, to wind up a long inquiry into Iran’s secretive quest for nuclear power.
A diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Heinonen, its chief of non-proliferation safeguards, would meet senior Iranian officials in Tehran to push for credible responses regarding the “alleged weaponisation studies.”
Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported Heinonen and Iranian officials would address “ways of resolving the remaining issue” between Tehran and the Vienna-based IAEA.
An agency report on Iran in February said the IAEA had resolved all outstanding questions into Iran’s nuclear past except for suspected attempts to “weaponise” nuclear materials.
“This is an issue of importance, obviously. The international community needs to make sure Iran did not have a weapons program,” IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Berlin on Thursday.—Agencies