Iran’s top atomic energy agency chief makes the announcement. Iran’s parliamentary chief says instead that all the commotion over Iran’s new facility is a Western plot to force his country into submission.

Beirut (AsiaNews) – Iran will soon inform the International Atomic Energy Agency of a timetable for inspection of a newly disclosed uranium enrichment plant (pictured), its atomic energy agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview to state-owned Press TV. However, as Iranian authorities are wont to do, what one official says, another contradicts.

Salehi spoke yesterday, three days before the much anticipated meeting between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, US and UK—, plus Germany).

However, Press TV quoted Parliamentary (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator for Iran, as saying that all the sudden commotion over Iran’s new enrichment facility outside Tehran is a Western ploy to create high international tensions ahead of crucial nuclear talks

For his part, Salehi had noted, “Iran has taken all the precautionary steps to safeguard its nuclear facilities,” Press TV quoted him as saying.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, told the BBC on Monday that IAEA inspectors would be given access to the site “in the near future”, but gave no date.

For Larijani, Western powers want to “impose their will on the country”.

Even though Iran’s leadership is deeply divided, through such statements Iran is likely posturing ahead of the Geneva meeting. (PD)

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