Iran: No date fixed for talks with IAEA

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Fereidoun Abbasi announced that the AEOI is not informed of any date for a new round of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), dismissing media reports that the two sides are due to hold negotiations in August. "We have not lately been informed of any negotiations in Mr. Jalili's area (Iran's talks with the world powers) or the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA," Abbasi told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday. He said the AEOI officials will inform the media in case Iran and the IAEA decide to hold a new round of talks. In relevant remarks on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi also underlined that no exact date has been set for the new round of talks between Iran and the IAEA. “No definite decision has been taken and no agreement reached for holding talks between Iran and IAEA,” Araqchi said on Tuesday. “As long as Iran’s president-elect has not taken office and his cabinet members have not been selected no negotiations can take place between the two sides …,” the Iranian diplomat added. Araqchi’s remark came as western diplomats said earlier this week that Iran and the IAEA might hold their new round of nuclear talks in August. A diplomat in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency is based, said on Monday he believed the aim was for an Iran-IAEA meeting in mid-August but that no decision had yet been taken. “I think that no meeting in August would be a bad sign,” another Western envoy said. That would be shortly before the IAEA issues its next, quarterly report on Iran's nuclear program in late August and ahead of a weeklong session of the UN agency's 35-nation governing board in September. The IAEA-Iran discussions are separate from, but still closely associated with, broader negotiations between Tehran and six world powers aimed at a political solution to the dispute. The IAEA, in an e-mailed response to a Reuters question, said it had no news to report about any future discussions with Iran. They last met in May in Vienna. International hopes for a resolution of the nuclear dispute were boosted by the election of Hassan Rouhani because he has promised a different approach to foreign relations, and specially the country's nuclear standoff with the West, than incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yet he has underlined that access and use of the nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment, is an indispensible part of Iran's rights. But Western officials know well that it is Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei who decides nuclear policy. Iran says it is enriching uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, and for medical purposes. But the Western states claim that Iran intends to ultimately make a nuclear bomb, although they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told Reuters last month