Cyrus Nasseri told AFP that any such inspections of the Parchin and Lavizan military sites would be "transparency" visits, beyond the inspections that are required by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran is ready "with an open mind to come to an agreement on modalities" for these visits but "first things come first" and "other issues have to be made clear," Nasseri said, referring to safeguards matters such as questions about centrifuges and uranium contamination on imported equipment.

Visits to sites like Parchin are beyond nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards requirements, which are limited to inspecting sites where there is sure to be nuclear material.

Washington, which charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, has voiced concern the Iranians may be testing high-explosive charges with an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin, 30 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of Tehran, as a sort of dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had Tuesday told a meeting of the agency's board of governors in Vienna that he had urged Iran to let IAEA inspectors visit Parchin and Lavizan.

ElBaradei said this was to get "access to dual-use equipment and other information related to the Lavizan-Shian site and... additional agency visits to areas of interest at the Parchin site." Dual-use equipment can be used for either peaceful or military purposes.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran's nuclear program since February 2003

Nasseri, who is here with the Iranian delegation to the IAEA board meeting this week, said another problem is that "these transparency issues need confidentiality."

"We just have to make sure they are done more properly," Nasseri said, referring to leaks to the press on the investigation into Parchin and Lavizan, which are military sites.

Iran has refused to let UN nuclear inspectors follow up on a first visit to the Parchin military facility in January.

IAEA inspectors want to return to the sprawling site since they have only seen five out of what are a much larger number of buildings.

Iran has also refused to answer IAEA questions about Lavizan in Tehran, where there was suspicion of nuclear-related activities, Pierre Goldschmidt, the agency's deputy director general for safeguards, said at the previous IAEA board meeting in March.

Concerning the Lavizan site, which has been completely razed by the Iranians, Goldschmidt said Tehran had refused to answer IAEA questions about dual-use material and equipment that could be useful in uranium enrichment and conversion activities.

Diplomats told AFP the agency had requested but been denied access so far to interview key officials such as Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a brigadier general who has worked at Lavizan.

Nasseri said however that as a number of questions including about uranium contamination on imported equipment were being resolved, the IAEA investigation was "coming to an end anyway" and was "just down to a few nitty-grittys."

"We think the whole thing could have been over long ago," Nasseri said.

But he said the "agency has been prudent. This is an approach we understand. So we want to come to a fair conclusion."

Nasseri said he hoped the investigation could end when the board next meets in September.

Iran Admits To Processing Plutonium In 1998: IAEA
Vienna (AFP) Jun 15, 2005 Iran has admitted to processing plutonium, a potential material for atomic bombs, more recently than it originally reported, according to a UN draft report obtained by AFP and which diplomats claim shows the Islamic Republic is still hiding crucial nuclear activities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has been pursuing with Iran the dates of its plutonium separation experiments" and Iran has admitted to purifying plutonium in 1998, the three-page IAEA text said.

This was a revision of Iran's statements since 2003 "that the experiments were completed in 1993," according to the draft for a speech to be delivered to the IAEA's board of governors on Thursday by deputy director for safeguards Pierre Goldschmidt.

But Iran's head delegate to the board meeting Cyrus Nasseri told AFP that Tehran disagrees with the UN atomic agency's conclusions on the plutonium and that there will be talks on this "in the coming week."

A diplomat close to the IAEA said the agency "wants to know whether Iran is still processing plutonium."

"If they lied, then the IAEA knows this has implications. The agency wants to know if they're telling the truth and not making a firecracker," that is, a nuclear bomb, the diplomat said.

Another diplomat said "sadly a revelation should be shocking but considering the past history of Iranian cooperation with the agency and the endless revision of their official statements I am not surprised."

The draft of Goldschmidt's speech, which IAEA officials had wanted to keep confidential, outlines areas in which the IAEA is still trying to pin down Iran's nuclear activities in an investigation that began in February 2003.

The IAEA began its probe after discovering that Iran had hidden sensitive nuclear activities for over two decades and amid US charges that Tehran was using its civilian atomic energy program as a cover for weapons development.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday said Iran had not yet given "sufficient" information on key points and urged it to accelerate its cooperation with the agency in order to bring the investigation to a close.

Nasseri said he did not "think the report is negative" as its listing of open areas of inquiry "shows that matters are moving towards finalization."

"I believe any reasonable reading of the report would indicate that matters are narrowing down to a few points which should be on the verge of final clarification," Nasseri said.

The draft outlines IAEA efforts to discover connections to international smuggling in nuclear materials and designs arising from a meeting in 1987 between Iranian officials from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iranand a "foreign intermediary" who was offering "centrifuge-related design, technology and sample components."

Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium, which along with plutonium is a raw material for atom bombs.

"The agency has repeatedly, most recently in a letter dated 14 April 2005, asked to have access to, and copies of, the original documentation reflecting the 1987 offer," the draft text said.

The Iranians said the AEOI had turned down a uranium re-conversion unit but IAEA inspectors were wondering why "contacts (continued to take) . . . place during the period 1987 through 1993 between Iran and the intermediaries," with "design documents on P-1 centrifuges" being delivered again in connection with a new offer in 1994, according to the text.

The IAEA wants to be sure "there has been no other development or acquisition of enrichment design, technology or components by Iran," the text said.

Nasseri said a problem in tracing the black market is that "the type of deals that were made do not contain much written reporting."

The IAEA is also having trouble making progess in determining why Iran claims to have done no work on sophisticated P-2 centrifuges before 2002, although it had had blueprints for these advanced machines for some seven years.

Iran has not provided "sufficient assurance that no related activities were carried out during that period," Goldschmidt's draft speech said.

The IAEA is also investigating why the Gchine uranium mine was idle from

An intelligence source told AFP that Gchine was in fact a military controlled mine, and the IAEA draft report said the agency "has requested that the original contract between the AEOI and the engineering company that constructed the mill at Gchine be made available for the agency's review."

The IAEA had already made this request in March.

Nasseri denied that the mine was military-controlled.

In positive news, Goldschmidt is to say that the IAEA has verified that Iran has apparently indicated correctly how much uranium gas it had made for enrichment from 37 tons of uranium ore it had processed at a conversion facility in Isfahan.

The analysis has yet to be finalized.

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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