The UN nuclear watchdog said it made no progress in talks with Iran today to seal a deal on resuming a long-stalled investigation into suspected atom bomb research by the Islamic state and it called the outcome "disappointing".
The meeting's failure - a few weeks after the UN nuclear chief said he had won assurances by Tehran that an agreement would be struck - may dim prospects for success in broader negotiations between Iran and major powers later this month.
Herman Nackaerts, global head of inspections for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said after the eight-hour meeting at IAEA headquarters in Vienna that no date for further discussions on the matter had been set.
The IAEA had been pressing Tehran for an accord that would give its inspectors immediate access to the Parchin military complex, where it believes explosives tests relevant for the development of nuclear arms have taken place and suspects Iran may now be cleaning the site of any incriminating evidence.
The United States, European powers and Israel want to curb Iranian nuclear activities they fear are intended to produce nuclear bombs. The Islamic Republic says its nuclear programme is meant purely to produce energy for civilian uses.
Six world powers were scrutinising the IAEA-Iran meeting to judge whether the Iranians were ready to make concessions before a resumption of wider-ranging discussions with them in Moscow on June 18th-19th on the decade-old nuclear dispute.
The lack of result may heighten Western suspicions that Iran is seeking to drag out the two sets of talks to buy time for its uranium enrichment programme, without backing down in the face of international demands that it suspend its sensitive work.
"It should by now be clear to everyone that Iran is not negotiating in good faith," a senior Western diplomat said.
Mr Nackaerts said the IAEA had come to the meeting with a desire to finalise the deal and had presented a revised draft that addressed earlier stated concerns by Iran."
However, there has been no progress," he told reporters. "And indeed Iran raised issues that we have already discussed and added new ones. This is disappointing. A date for a follow-on meeting has yet to be fixed."
Late last month, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano returned from a one-day visit to Tehran saying the two sides had decided to reach a deal and that he expected it to be signed soon.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior US state department official and now a director at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London, said: "This situation is reminiscent of the Peanuts cartoon of Charlie Brown repeatedly believing Lucy this time will hold the football for him to kick, with her always snatching it away at the last minute, leaving him to fall flat."
Reuters