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Tehran condemns Amano for 'remote-controlling' negotiations

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 6, 2013 11:7PM GMT

Iran has strongly criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for mishandling the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program and “remote-controlling” its negotiations with Tehran.

“The source of this problem is not Iran; [it] is the way the secretariat is managing this sort of remote-controlling negotiation which does not work,” Iran's Ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters after a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna on Wednesday.

Soltanieh’s remarks targeted IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, whom the envoy blamed for leaving the IAEA's negotiating team without “the full authority to negotiate and decide.”

Sometimes after hours of discussion, the team would leave and come back in a couple of minutes to stop the meeting, he explained. “Then this is not negotiation.”

Soltanieh condemned the allegations against Iran’s nuclear energy program and the alleged military dimension, which “have proved to be baseless,” but have kept the IAEA “continuously involved and busy.”

“We have a serious security concern because these allegations are directly related to our national security,” he noted.

The Iranian envoy blamed the nuclear organization for dragging out the problem regarding the military site of Parchin.

He rejected the agency’s claim that Tehran had denied IAEA inspectors access to the site, saying that the officials would have been able to visit the site if the agency's chief had not mishandled the issue.

Soltanieh highlighted the need for a modality before visiting Parchin. “We cannot give a blank check for our national security, no country will give a blank check,” he stressed.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program. Over the false allegation, Washington and the European Union have imposed several rounds of illegal sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.

MRS/MHB