UN nuke chief: Iran appears to be stonewalling Access to army site 'priority' in talks.

UN nuke chief: Iran appears to be stonewalling access to army site 'priority' in talks.(JPost).ST GALLEN, Switzerland - Gaining access to a key Iranian military facility will be the priority for the UN nuclear watchdog when it resumes talks with the Islamic state in mid-May, agency head Yukiya Amano said 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. 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, where the IAEA believes nuclear-related military research may have taken place. Iran denies this. "We need to look at all the outstanding issues, but Parchin is the priority and we should start with that," Amano said.
Western diplomats say Iran appears to be stonewalling the IAEA's request to go to Parchin and they suspect it may be "sanitizing" the site southeast of Tehran of any incriminating evidence before any visit, a suspicion Tehran dismisses. Amano has said the agency has noticed some "activities" at Parchin - a choice of words that Western diplomats interpret as suggesting the IAEA also harbors suspicions of possible clean-up work, on the basis of satellite images at its disposal. Asked what he meant by "activities", Amano said on Friday: "We do not have people there so we cannot tell what these activities are." 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
Meanwhile Iran dismisses West demand to close Fordow underground nuke bunker.Iran said on Friday it will never suspend its uranium enrichment programme and sees no reason to close the Fordow underground site, making clear Tehran's red lines in nuclear talks with world powers later this month.
Last month a senior US official said the United States and its allies would demand that Iran halt higher-grade enrichment and immediately close the Fordow facility at talks over Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West.Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told Reuters he saw "no justification" for closing Fordow, which he said was under IAEA surveillance. "When you have a safe place, secure place under IAEA control, then why do you tell me that I should close it?" he said, making clear Iran built the site to better protect its nuclear program against any Israeli or US attacks. "Fordow is a safe place. We have spent a lot of money and time to have a safe place," Soltanieh added."One thing is clear: the enrichment in Iran will never be suspended," Soltanieh said. He declined to comment however on Western demands that Iran halt the higher-grade enrichment, to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, it started in 2010 and has since sharply increased, shortening the time needed for any nuclear weapons breakout.Read the full story here and here.