DUBAI: Kuwait has said that it was vital for Tehran to allow the UN’s nuclear watchdog to fully investigate the nature of Iran’s nuclear program to assure that it was being implemented for peaceful intentions.
Abdullah Al-Obaidi, Kuwait’s deputy permanent representative to international organizations, said there was a “great deal of uncertainty” on the nature of Tehran’s nuclear program, in a report from state news agency KUNA.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told member states in a confidential report last week that its verification and monitoring activities had been “seriously undermined” since February by Iran’s refusal to let inspectors access their monitoring equipment.
The Kuwaiti diplomat expressed concern about content in the report which said traces of uranium were found at three undeclared nuclear sites in Iran which according to him, still needed a lucid explanation.
Tehran must fully cooperate with the IAEA and allow its inspectors greater access to its nuclear plants as part of efforts to break the impasse, Al-Obaidi said in his statement.
The IAEA report also prompted a US warning that time was running out for Iran to return to a nuclear deal after a scathing report by the UN atomic watchdog.
“I’m not going to put a date on it, but we are getting closer to the point at which a strict return to compliance with the JCPOA does not reproduce the benefits that that agreement achieved,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Germany earlier, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal by its acronym.
Iran on Sunday agreed to allow international inspectors to install new memory cards in surveillance cameras at its nuclear sites and continue filming there after IAEA chief Rafael Grossi traveled to Tehran for talks with the country’s nuclear research chief Mohammad Eslami.
Kuwait supports UN probe into nature of Iran’s nuclear program
https://arab.news/b9nek
Kuwait supports UN probe into nature of Iran’s nuclear program
- Kuwait diplomat: a great deal of uncertainty on the nature of Tehran’s nuclear program
Iran, UK foreign ministers in rare direct contact
- A UK government source said Cooper “emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and raised a number of other issues”
TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken by phone with his British counterpart Yvette Cooper, an Iranian foreign ministry statement said on Saturday, in a rare case of direct contact between the two countries.
The ministry said that in Friday’s call the ministers “stressed the need to continue consultations at various levels to strengthen mutual understanding and pursue issues of mutual interest.”
A UK government source said Cooper “emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and raised a number of other issues.”
The source in London said Cooper raised the case of Lindsay and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran for nearly a year on suspicion of espionage.
The Iranian ministry statement did not mention the case of the two Britons.
It said Araghchi criticized “the irresponsible approach of the three European countries toward the Iranian nuclear issue,” referring to Britain, France and Germany.
The three countries at the end of September initiated the
reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear program.
The Foremans, both in their early fifties, were seized in January as they passed through Kerman, in central Iran, while on a round-the-world motorbike trip.
Iran accuses the couple of entering the country pretending to be tourists so as to gather information for foreign intelligence services, an allegation the couple’s family rejects.
Before Friday’s call, the last exchange between the two ministers was in October.
