IRAN:Iran has resolved UN questions about tests with plutonium, a key fuel for atomic bombs, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) considers the matter closed, according to the text of an IAEA-Iran agreement released yesterday.
It would be the first major issue relating to Iran's disputed nuclear programme, closed by the UN nuclear watchdog in a four-year investigation stonewalled up to now, with other questions to be settled within the next few months.
Iran and the IAEA reached an agreement on August 21st meant to clarify questions about indications of illicit attempts to make atomic bombs in Iran's declared effort to produce nuclear energy - suspicions that helped lead to UN sanctions against Tehran.
The plan's other goal is to ensure regular, effective access for IAEA inspectors to Iran's underground uranium enrichment plant, where it plans industrial production of nuclear fuel.
But Western diplomats said the plan was flawed for not committing Iran to resume observing the IAEA's Additional Protocol, which permits wider-ranging, short-notice inspections of sites not declared to be nuclear.
Western powers, embroiled in a standoff with Iran over its refusal to heed UN resolutions demanding it stop nuclear work, say there is no way to rule out the risk that Iran might have a covert facility without the protocol being in place.
And the plan also says that once Iran had clarified the issues listed, the IAEA would declare there were "no remaining questions and ambiguities" about Iran's past activity, a gesture analysts called problematic without more sweeping inspections.
Iran has insisted that it seeks only electricity, not explosives, from enriched uranium. The plan said IAEA officials judged last week that information given by Iran this summer about its plutonium experiments was consistent with inspectors' findings.
"Thus this matter is resolved. This will be communicated officially by the agency to Iran through a letter," it said, without specifying exactly how suspicions were defused.
Iran and the IAEA also agreed to forge a legally-binding accord governing inspections at the expanding, underground Natanz enrichment complex by the end of September.
Iran would then explain its efforts to build advanced P-2 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium two to three times as fast as the outmoded, breakdown-prone P-1 model it now uses. Iran committed to resolving the P-2 issue by November.
It also committed to settling questions surrounding particles of weapons-grade enriched uranium found in Tehran's Technical University once the centrifuge matter was closed.