TEHRAN, Oct 5: Iran intends to answer International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) questions over its nuclear programme “as quickly as possible”, even though it does not consider itself bound by an October 31 deadline to do so, the Islamic republic’s representative to the IAEA told AFP on Sunday.

“This date of October 31 is not a criteria for us, because we have not accepted this resolution,” Ali Akbar Salehi said.

“We have said that we do not consider ourselves to be bound by this resolution, but... we will continue to cooperate with the IAEA and will try to make it so that the answers to outstanding issues will be given as quickly as possible,” he added.

In a resolution on September 12, the IAEA’s board of governors gave Iran until October 31 to guarantee it was not developing and would not develop atomic weapons under the cover of its civil nuclear program.

The resolution, passed after heavy US lobbying, also called on it to sign an additional protocol of the UN nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and implement it immediately and unconditionally.

An IAEA team is currently in the Islamic republic for what the agency’s chief Mohamed ElBaradei has described as a “decisive” round of inspections and talks aimed at clearing up a number of key questions over Iran’s nuclear programme.

A failure by Iran to meet the deadline could see Iran being declared in violation of the NPT and the matter being passed to the UN Security Council, which could in turn decide to sanction Iran.

But while casting aside the deadline — branded by a string of top officials here as part of a US-Israeli plot to undermine the Islamic regime — Salahi said Iran was determined to continue its cooperation with the IAEA.

“We have accomplished a number of things by going beyond our obligations (under the NPT), and as long as there are outstanding issues, we have promised to continue as before,” he said.

And he said the preparatory talks here with the IAEA team have already resulted in an accord on the “general framework on what needs to be done” over the coming weeks of IAEA scrutiny.

“Up to now, everything is going well,” Salahi said, adding the talks were taking place within a “logic of dialogue”.—AFP