All talk, no action: The IAEA's latest advice on Iran?

A senior IAEA official has urged further talks rather than action on Iran

by The Commentator on 14 March 2013 01:53

A senior IAEA official has argued that Iran’s nuclear issue should be resolved through dialogue and there is as yet no evidence from its declared activities about any attempt to make a bomb.

The Director General of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano told journalists after meeting a delegation headed by Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai that he would continue dialogue with Iran with the hope that both sides can report positive results after the next meeting in June.

Amano described the Iran nuclear issue as “very complicated,” and said that one essential element was very simple - that Iran would have to fully implement the Comprehensive Safeguard Agreement and other relevant obligations.

“This is the standard. In light of this standard, I can say that declared activities and material of Iran are staying in peaceful purposes, but as Iran is not implementing UNSC resolutions and the part of the Safeguard Agreement, we cannot give assurance that everything is for peaceful purposes”.

Critics have commented that Amano's stance of the issue is "naive", with one senior US source telling The Commentator that, "the IAEA will seek to appease Iran at a time when international action cannot be classed as a certainty".

Asked what should be done in this situation, Dr. Amano said that though IAEA and Iran had been intensifying dialogue since November 2011, the two sides had not yet reached agreement and no concrete result was achieved.

“This is not a good situation. So before the March Board of Governors meeting of the IAEA, we have thought and I stated in the Board of Governors meeting in Vienna that we have to work on this issue with a sense of urgency and the agreement must be in accordance with the effective verification practice,’’ he said.