Amano: Access to Parchin facility ‘priority’ in talks

Gaining access to the Parchin military site will be the priority for the UN nuclear watchdog when it resumes talks with the Islamic Republic in mid-May, Reuters quoted agency head Yukiya Amano as saying on Friday. Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the Vienna-based UN body did not yet have a “positive response” from Iran regarding the request for nuclear inspectors to be allowed to visit the Parchin site , which is located southeast of Tehran. But he told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in the Swiss town of St Gallen, “we would like to pursue this” issue of Parchin. “We need to look at all the outstanding issues, but Parchin is the priority and we should start with that,” Amano said. Iran and the IAEA will meet for two days of talks in Vienna on May 14-15, just over a week before the Islamic Republic and world powers are to hold a second round of broader political negotiations in Baghdad on May 23. “In my reading the desire to resolve this Iranian issue through dialogue is stronger now than before,” Amano told the conference, referring to the resumption of diplomacy between Iran and the powers in Istanbul last month after a gap of more than a year of escalating tension. “Recently we have witnessed a positive atmosphere but we need to have concrete results,” he later told reporters.