MOSCOW, August 23 (RIA Novosti) - Tehran will not give the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors access to Parchin military base that the UN nuclear inspectors were seeking since 2005, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday citing the country’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehgan.
"The agency carried out several visits to Parchin [before 2005], took samples and found nothing untoward," Dehgan was quoted as saying. "There is therefore no reason for new access to Parchin as nothing new has come up since the last inspections."
Parchin military base is located 30 kilometers away from the capital of Tehran. The IAEA believes that a large explosives containment vessel was built at the Parchin site, and that it might be used to conduct experiments related to a nuclear weapons program. These activities are “strong indicators of possible nuclear weapon development,” the agency said. Iran maintains that the base in Parchin is a defense object and is therefore of no interest to the IAEA.
