Iran's chief negotiator met the top UN nuclear monitor on Friday ahead of talks with the EU in what could be a last chance to defuse a stand-off over Tehran's atomic ambitions and head off tougher UN sanctions.
Ali Larijani was received by International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohammed ElBaradei in Vienna amid IAEA concern about increasing Iranian restrictions on access for agency inspectors imposed in retaliation for existing sanctions.
Larijani goes on to Portugal's capital Lisbon on Saturday for talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has been exploring a face-saving way for Iran to stop enriching uranium, a move repeatedly ruled out by Tehran.
A senior Iranian official, in remarks that might have worried Western powers fearing Tehran is seeking to build atom bombs, was quoted as saying it now had 3,000 centrifuge machines running - a basis for "industrial" production of nuclear fuel. But the government then denied he said such a thing to ISNA news agency, as well as a statement by him that Iran had stockpiled 100 kg (220 pounds) of enriched uranium material.
"(Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi) did not say anything about the amount of enriched uranium (or) the numbers of installed centrifuges ... Therefore recent reports citing him are denied," the public relations office of the Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.
The last Larijani-Solana meeting in Madrid in May brought no breakthrough on the core enrichment dispute and the latest exploratory talks were unlikely to make much headway.'
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.