SHUNEH (Jordan) June 22: The head of the US’s nuclear watchdog urged Iran on Sunday to cooperate more to ease global concerns about its nuclear programme, and said it would take several more months to inspect it fully.

“We have seen some cooperation, but I’d like to see that cooperation accelerated...extended,” Mohammed ElBaradei told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

“It’s a good beginning, but I’d like to see more cooperation...Hopefully in the next two to three months we should be able to have a good picture of how things are.”

Asked if he planned to visit the country, ElBaradei replied: “There are visits by experts from the agency and if I see that my visit is necessary I will go”.

On Saturday, the head of Iran’s atomic energy authority again rejected growing international demands for Iran to immediately allow tougher UN inspections of its nuclear programme.

But Gholam Reza Aghazadeh pledged that Iran would show greater cooperation with the IAEA and said he was optimistic that further negotiations would pave the way for an end to the dispute.

The IAEA has called on Iran to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that would permit UN inspectors to carry out surprise visits to suspect nuclear facilities.

So far IAEA teams are only permitted to make pre-arranged visits to declared sites related to Iran’s bid to produce atomic power — a programme the United States alleges is a cover for nuclear weapons development.

Germany favours: Germany suspects Iran is building nuclear weapons and favours a carrot-and-stick approach to persuade Tehran to shed more light on the research, a German newspaper reported Sunday.

Quoting sources in the Foreign Office in Berlin, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung quoted senior officials saying the “type and scale” of Iranian research and efforts to obtain technology abroad suggested “development of a nuclear-weapon programme”.

However Germany had no proper proof, a source said. Berlin wanted Tehran to reveal more and would use both pressure and enticements.

It would link the prospect of a trade treaty between Iran and the European Union with Tehran signing a supplementary agreement to grant greater inspection powers to the IAEA, the newspaper said.

No immediate confirmation of the report was available from Berlin officials, as the Foreign Office was closed on Sunday. ——Reuters/AFP/dpa