Vienna: The US accused Iran on Wednesday of
"flouting" its international obligations and dismissed
Tehran's recent offer to meet with world powers about its
disputed nuclear program as a "charm offensive."
The statement by Glyn Davies, chief US delegate to the
International Atomic Energy Agency, comes ahead of next week's
UN General Assembly meeting. Davies said the Islamic
republic's latest offer for talks fails to provide any fresh
indications of an Iranian commitment to address international
concerns that it could be working on nuclear warhead
experiments.
"Stonewalling the IAEA, flouting UN Security Council
obligations and mounting this most recent charm offensive do
not reflect a good-faith effort to resolve those concerns,"
Davies told reporters.
Iran already is under four sets of Security Council
sanctions for refusing to freeze uranium enrichment, as the US
and its Western allies have been demanding for years.
Tehran says it needs the programme to make reactor fuel,
but the council fears it could be re-engineered to produce
fissile warhead material despite Iranian insistence that its
program is purely for peaceful purposes.
In its latest Iran report earlier this month, the IAEA for
the first time said it is "increasingly concerned" about
credible "extensive and comprehensive" intelligence suggesting
that Iran continues its secret weapons work. At the opening of
a meeting of the IAEA's 35 board members earlier this week,
the agency's chief Yukiya Amano indicated the body had
information backing this belief.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 23:59