IAEA report verifies Iran transparency: IAEA envoy

Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the agency’s leaked report verifies Tehran’s “full transparency” in its nuclear program.

“Iran has cooperated completely and indeed made the possibility for the IAEA to verify all aspects of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and … the technical details of the report show full transparency on behalf of Iran,” said Reza Najafi in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Friday.

The report also shows that the agency has had “full monitoring” over Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities, Najafi added.

“The major part [of the report] is related to the implementation of the safeguard agreements which indicates that IAEA has full monitoring over all places and activities with details of the locations, the number of centrifuges, the amount of materials whether enriched or not enriched,” he stated.

The Iranian official rejected as undocumented the IAEA’s claims with regard to Iran’s Marivan site, saying the agency has failed to provide any evidence for its allegations so far.

“The repetition of such claims would not add to the value of such claims,” Najafi noted, adding, “It is up to the agency to ask those member states who gave the information, or in our view wrong information, to the agency to enable the agency to verify the claims and allegations.”

On November 20, 2014, Najafi said Iran will on a “voluntarily basis” give the Vienna-based IAEA access to the Marivan site, located more than 700 kilometers (434 miles) west of the Iranian capital, Tehran.

On December 11, 2014, the IAEA claimed that the offer does not help address the agency's concerns pertaining to the issue of alleged high-explosive experiments at the site.

An IAEA report in 2011 claimed that it had information indicating large-scale high-explosive experiments were conducted at the site. Tehran has categorically dismissed the allegation.

The latest IAEA report comes as Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in the Swiss city of Geneva.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman held talks on Friday.

Iran and the P5+1 countries – Russia, China, France, Britain, the United States and Germany – are seeking to seal a high-profile political deal by the end of March and to confirm the full technical details of the accord by July 1.

The scale of Iran’s uranium enrichment and the timetable for the removal of anti-Iran sanctions are seen as the major stumbling blocks in the talks.

Iran has so far suspended some of its enrichment program in return for certain sanctions relief.

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