TEHRAN, Feb 11: Iran has rejected U.S. charges over its nuclear projects and has granted unlimited permission for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the official news agency IRNA said on Tuesday.

“We pursue all our nuclear activities on the basis of international regulations and there can be an unlimited IAEA inspection throughout our soil,” government spokesman Abdullah Ramezanzadeh told IRNA.

He was referring to remarks by U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who had charged that Iran’s mining of uranium was part of an effort to develop an atomic weapons programme.

President Mohammad Khatami announced over the weekend that Tehran intended to harness its own nuclear energy by producing nuclear fuel rods from uranium deposits in the central part of the country, saying, however, that his country does not seek nuclear weapons.

“President Khatami’s remarks should not be classified as a political statement but just an announcement of a significant scientific and technological achievement of the Iranian nation,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman also rejected US charges that Iran has sufficient conventional energy resources and needed no nuclear ones.

Iran was definitely in need of new energy resources as relying only on the currently available resources such as oil, gas or hydroelectric power would not respond to the total energy demand in the future, Ramezanzadeh said.

ELBARADEI: The UN’s chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei is to visit Iran on Feb 22-23, advancing by three days a previously planned trip, a spokesman said in Vienna.