United Nations Radio

There's been no movement between Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog on a number of issues of concern, which the IAEA says need to be clarified before it can verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Teheran's nuclear programme.

Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed El Baradei told the Board of Governors that while the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, it's been well over a year since the IAEA was last able to engage Iran in discussions abut these outstanding issues:

"We have effectively reached a dead end, unless Iran engages fully with us. It would help if we were able to share with Iran more of the material that is at the centre of these concerns. I also believe that prospects for a resolution of these outstanding issues would be enhanced by Iran implementing the Additional Protocol and by the initiation of the hoped for comprehensive dialogue between Iran and the international community."

El Baradei noted that in September, Iran informed the Agency that it had decided to construct a new pilot fuel enrichment plant. The Agency has since carried out design information verification at this plant and verified that it is being built to contain 16 cascades with a total of approximately 3000 centrifuges.

This is Donn Bobb reporting for United Nations Radio.
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