TEHRAN — Five U.N. nuclear inspectors arrived yesterday to determine whether Iran has stopped suspect nuclear activities, including the building of centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
Muhammad Saeedi, a top Iranian nuclear official, said the experts from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency have arrived for a series of meetings and inspections.
The visit coincides with a call by Iranian radicals that their government should defy the nuclear agency, expel U.N. inspectors and resume uranium enrichment. The government, though, appears determined to stick to a more moderate approach in hopes of avoiding international isolation.
The United States and other nations accuse Iran of having a covert nuclear weapons program and are pushing the United Nations to impose sanctions. Tehran insists that its nuclear activities are peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.
Mr. Saeedi said that to win “greater international trust,” Iran stopped building and assembling centrifuges Friday, as it had promised during a one-day visit last week by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
It was the second such promise. Iran said March 29 that it had stopped building centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
Mr. ElBaradei had welcomed the centrifuge announcement and said the inspectors who arrived yesterday would try to verify that all uranium enrichment activities had stopped.
Later yesterday, Mr. ElBaradei arrived in his native Egypt from Vienna, Austria, for a three-day visit, during which he is expected to discuss the issue of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.
In Cairo, Mr. ElBaradei said Iran has been “slow” to cooperate with the IAEA, but that he hoped that after his visit to Tehran, negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program would improve.
He also discussed Iraq, saying IAEA inspectors would return to the country once “conditions calm there.”
The IAEA has said that it found no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq. However, because its inspectors had to withdraw before they could complete their work, the agency has cautioned repeatedly that its initial findings are not conclusive.
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