UN:VIENNA - Iran has agreed to answer intelligence allegations that it studied how to design nuclear bombs, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday.
Mohamed ElBaradei called the gesture a "milestone". The Islamic republic has previously denied the reports but declined to address them in detail.
Resolving whether Iran secretly tried to "weaponise" nuclear materials is key to winding up an International Atomic Energy Agency inquiry into Tehran's nuclear programme, now under UN sanctions because of suspicions of a covert quest for bombs. "[ This agreement] is a certain milestone and hopefully by the end of May we'll be in position to get the explanation and clarification from Iran as to these alleged studies," said Mr ElBaradei said.
"This, in my view, is a positive step," he added during a visit to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
His spokeswoman said the deal was struck during meetings in Tehran on Monday and Tuesday between Iranian leaders and Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's safeguards chief and top investigator.
The IAEA did not elaborate. Iran had called the talks with Mr Heinonen "positive" but did not say what they involved.
Iran has rejected as fabricated the intelligence about weapons experiments. It said earlier exchanges with the IAEA had resolved the issue and there would be no more discussions.
But the IAEA has insisted that Iran back up its denials with proof. US intelligence findings said Iran researched bomb designs until 2003 and other countries believe the illicit work continued more recently.
An unidentified Iranian official in the delegation that met Mr Heinonen did not mention the deal in remarks released by official news agency IRNA. "Iran's door is open for negotiations with IAEA legal representatives and Iran will continue its co-operation with the agency like before," the official said.
Iran says its nuclear campaign aims solely to generate an alternative source of electricity so that it can export more of its oil and gas. It is the world's fourth largest oil exporter.
But its history of nuclear secrecy and continued restrictions on IAEA inspections have fanned western suspicions that the underlying purpose of its efforts to industrialise uranium enrichment is the ability to assemble atom bombs.
Iran is under sanctions for refusing to suspend the work.
Diplomats said the point of Mr Heinonen's trip was to push for Iranian responses to the intelligence, which indicated that Iran linked projects to process uranium, test high explosives and modify a missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead.
Western powers on the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors have accused Iran of evasive tactics that dragged out agency inquiries for years before it supplied explanations over the past six months.
"Answers are long overdue," said a European diplomat accredited to the IAEA when asked about the Iran-IAEA deal.
"We hope Iran will now take the opportunity to engage seriously on these important questions without any further delay as requested in UN Security Council [ resolutions] and suspend all enrichment-related activities so as to allow negotiations to reach a long-term settlement to this issue," he said.
Mr ElBaradei is due to issue a quarterly report on Iran in late May.
The agency's information, which remains unverified, comes from an Iranian defector's laptop computer handed to the US in 2004, intelligence from other western sources, and from investigations by inspectors. - ( Reuters )