International Desk: Iran warned Tuesday that a resolution to be proposed at a meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog urging the country to allow access to two disputed sites would be “counterproductive”.
European states are expected to put the resolution before the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors' meeting this week.
But Kazem Gharib Abadi, Iran's UN Ambassador in Vienna said: “Introduction of this resolution aiming to call on Iran to cooperate with the Agency … is disappointing and absolutely counterproductive.”
Diplomats say the resolution will call on Iran to provide access to two locations where past nuclear activity may have occurred — sites to which the IAEA has been trying to win access for months.
At the start of this week's meeting on Monday, the IAEA's Director General Rafael Grossi repeated his appeal to Iran to “cooperate immediately and fully” with the agency.
On the issue of the two sites “quite clearly we are in disagreement”, he acknowledged.
Even though the sites in question are not thought to be directly relevant to Iran's current activities, the agency says it needs to know if activities going back almost two decades have been properly declared and all materials accounted for.
But in Tuesday's statement Gharib Abadi warned that if the resolution was adopted “Iran would have no choice but to take appropriate measures, the consequences of which would be upon the sponsors of such political and destructive approaches”.
He did not specify what these measures would be.
