Iran to arrange IAEA visit 'as soon as possible': Iran`s envoy

TEHRAN, Dec. 23 (MNA) – Tehran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that he will make the arrangements for a visit by the agency's officials to Iran as soon as possible. "As soon as the holidays are over, we will sit down with Mr. (Herman) Nackaerts and arrange the visit," Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told AFP on Thursday. Nackaerts is the IAEA deputy director and the head of the IAEA Department of Safeguards. "As far as we are concerned, his team can come as soon as they are ready," Soltanieh said, adding that the meeting would happen in the first week of January and that the visit could take place later the same month. He said that Iran had renewed an earlier invitation despite its "disappointment" that inspectors had not visited ahead of the report that the UN nuclear watchdog released on November 8, in which it claimed that Iran appears to have worked on designing an atomic bomb. According to IRNA, in a letter to IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano dated December 9, Tehran invited the agency's senior officials, including Nackaerts, to make a trip to Iran. "Once again we have decided to show political will and our good intentions to cooperate with the IAEA in order to demonstrate transparency about the exclusively peaceful nature of our activities," Soltanieh said. He added that he wanted the visit by inspectors to ensure that "past mistakes are not repeated... and to end this endless process once and for all." Iran announced on August 23, 2011 that Nackaerts had taken tours of inspection to the Fordo and Natanz enrichment facilities, the Arak heavy water reactor, Isfahan’s uranium conversion facility, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant. It was also reported that he had held talks with Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Fereydoun Abbasi during his five-day stay.