TEHRAN, Aug 6: Iran’s official news agency said on Wednesday Tehran held “positive and constructive” talks with the UN’s nuclear watchdog on snap inspections of nuclear facilities Washington suspects may be used to make atomic bombs.

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team arrived in Tehran on Monday to discuss the possibility of Iran signing an “additional protocol” to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which would allow inspectors to carry out more intrusive, no-notice checks of nuclear sites.

Iran’s signature of the protocol is seen as crucial to allaying international concerns that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions may go beyond its stated aim of generating electricity from nuclear power.

President Mohammad Khatami stressed on Wednesday that Iran’s nuclear programme was entirely peaceful.

“I emphasize that Iran is totally against any form of weapons of mass destruction and denounce as false and groundless the claims that Iran is producing nuclear weapons,” IRNA quoted him as saying in a meeting with senior Iranian officials.

While Washington has led the chorus of international concern about Iran’s nuclear programme, the European Union, Russia and Japan have also urged the Islamic Republic to provide greater assurances that it will not be diverted into military uses.

In a June report, the IAEA criticized Tehran for failing to report a number of activities related to its nuclear programme.

Iran has pledged to cooperate fully with the IAEA, which is due to release another report on Iran next month.

While pro-reform government officials and lawmakers argue that signing the protocol would ease international pressure on Iran, hardliners say it would give carte blanche to Iran’s enemies to spy on the country.

“The notion that accepting the additional protocol will exculpate Iran is an infantile and amateurish supposition,” Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, told the ISNA student news agency on Tuesday.

“The only thing which can foil the plot hatched jointly by America, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency against Islamic Iran is our withdrawal from the NPT.”

Officials from Iran’s pro-reform government have said Tehran has no intention of pulling out of the NPT.—Reuters