June 8, 2003	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1424

TEHRAN, June 7: UN inspectors arrived in Iran on Saturday, a top official said, a day after the UN’s nuclear watchdog alleged that Tehran had failed to honour its nuclear safeguards agreement, which Washington called “deeply troubling” and a cause for world alarm.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors entered Iran today ... They are doing their job as usual,” Iran’s atomic energy organization spokesman said.

On television earlier, the spokesman rejected the IAEA charges, which appeared in a report widely leaked to the media, saying Iran had fully abided by its obligations and could provide answers to the agency.

“This report like most other reports by the IAEA shows the transparent interactions between Iran’s atomic energy organization and the IAEA,” the spokesman said. “We will also study and evaluate this report and express our official stance in a declaration at the IAEA meeting on June 16 in Vienna.

“We will continue our cooperation with the agency and at the moment an inspection group from the agency is active in Iran to continue its work.”

According to the IAEA report, Iran was found to have violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but was taking steps to correct the problem.

The report, filed to member states ahead of the Vienna meeting, comes amid mounting pressure from Washington, which suspects Tehran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that “we think the report and Iran’s programmes themselves are deeply troubling and need to be studied carefully by all members. Then we need to look at it seriously together”.

While declining to comment on the specific contents of the report, Mr Boucher did say that it would provide insights into Tehran’s nuclear programmes.

“We’ve known for some time that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme,” he said.

“Iran’s clandestine nuclear programme represents a serious challenge to regional stability, the entire international community and to the global non-proliferation regime.”

As news broke of the controversy on Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said: “We have done nothing which would violate our commitments regarding the NPT.”

Iran’s leadership has denied US allegations that it is developing nuclear weapons, saying it is only meeting energy needs through its nuclear power plants under construction.

But the IAEA report said Iran had “failed to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material, the subsequent processing and use of that material and the declaration of facilities where the material was stored and processed”.

It added that Iran had begun to correct the situation, but that “the process of verifying the correctness and completeness of the Iranian declarations is still ongoing”. —AFP