"Given the fact that Parchin is a military site and finding access to such a site is a time-consuming process and cannot be done repeatedly, and taking into account that the Agency has been asked (by Iran) to integrate all the related issues, including the hydrodynamic tests, permission will be granted for access" to Parchin (of course, only after the aforementioned demand is materialized), a statement by Iran's Representative Office at the IAEA said.
"Clearly, this process can start only when an agreement is made on the modality plan," it said, and reminded that the two sides have already agreed that the IAEA's demand for accessing Parchin be postponed until after the next meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors currently underway in Vienna.
News media reported last week that Iran had flatly refused the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to its Parchin military test facility, based on a statement to reporters by IAEA Deputy Director General, Herman Nackaerts, that "we could not get access".
But, explicit statements later made on the issue by the Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA and the language of the new IAEA report indicate that Iran did not reject an IAEA visit to the base per se but was only refusing access as long as no agreement had been reached with the IAEA governing the modalities of cooperation.
Based on the history of Iranian negotiations with the IAEA and its agreement to allow two separate IAEA visits to Parchin in 2005, the Parchin access issue is a bargaining chip that Iran is using to get the IAEA to moderate its demands on Iran in forging an agreement on how to resolve the years-long IAEA investigation into Iran's nuclear issue.
In interviews with Russia Today, Reuters, and Fars News Agency (FNA), Iran's Permanent Representative to IAEA Ali Asqar Soltaniyeh said Iran told the high-level IAEA mission that it would allow access to Parchin once modalities of Iran-IAEA cooperation had been agreed on.
"We declared that, upon finalization of the modality, we will give access (to Parchin)," Soltaniyeh said.
In the Russia Today interview on February 27, which was completely ignored by the western news media, Soltaniyeh referred to two IAEA inspection visits to Parchin in January and November 2005 and said Iran needs to have "assurances" that it would not "repeat the same bitter experience, when they just come and ask for the access." There should be a "modality" and a "frame of reference, of what exactly they are looking for, they have to provide the documents and specify exactly where they want (to go)," he said.
But Soltaniyeh also indicated that such an inspection visit is conditional on agreement about the broader framework for cooperation on clearing up suspicions of a past nuclear weapons program.
"In principle we have already accepted that when this text is concluded we will take these steps," Soltaniyeh said.
The actual text of the IAEA report, dated February 24, provides crucial information about the Iranian position in the talks that is consistent with what Soltaniyeh is saying.
In its account of the first round of talks in late January on what the IAEA is calling a "structured approach to the clarification of all outstanding issues", the report states: "The Agency requested access to the Parchin site, but Iran did not grant access to the site at that time [emphasis added]." That wording obviously implies that Iran was willing to grant access to Parchin if certain conditions were met.
On the February 20-21 meetings, the agency said that Iran "stated that it was still not able to grant access to that site." There was likely a more complex negotiating situation behind the lack of agreement on a Parchin visit than had been suggested by Nackaerts and reported in western news media.
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