By IANS,
Tehran : Iran’s new Speaker Ali Larijani Wednesday said parliament would set limits on cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the nuclear issue if the US continues to influence the UN nuclear watchdog’s interaction with the government.
“A mysterious diplomatic give-and-take is underway between US and the UN nuclear agency to bring baseless allegations against Iran,” Larijani said in his first reaction to a report IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei, IRNA reported.
IAEA released a report Monday saying Iran has failed to adequately answer questions based on intelligence that shows the Islamic state may have sought nuclear arms.
“Substantive explanations are required from Iran to support its statements on the alleged studies and on other information with a possible military dimension” of its nuclear activities,” the IAEA report said.
Following the report US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack accused Tehran of being “wilfully non-cooperative” over the nuclear issue.
“The West must stop its secretive diplomatic scheme of passing Iran’s nuclear case back and forth between the IAEA and the five permanent UN members plus Germany,” Larijani, his country’s former nuclear negotiator with the IAEA, said.
“This parliament will not allow such a deception,” Larijani said, adding that “Should such a trend continue, parliament will set new limits on cooperation with the IAEA.”
He claimed that several articles of ElBaradei’s latest report have been written in an “ambiguous” way and criticised media misinformation about Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities in the past few days.
The IAEA has admitted that all nuclear substances of the enrichment fuel factory and the heavy water plant are under the agency’s supervision, Larijani stressed.
“The IAEA report also stressed that no sign of enrichment-related re-processing activities have been witnessed in Iran’s installations and that the agency is monitoring the country’s heavy water-related activities by satellite pictures,” Larijani said.
He asked the nuclear watchdog to issue law-based reports without allowing itself to be trapped in disinformation.
ElBaradei’s latest report, which was circulated Monday evening to the UN Security Council and the IAEA Board of Governors, showed serious concern on Iran’s nuclear programme.