VIENNA, Aug 21: The UN nuclear watchdog meets this week Pakistani officials to check its conclusions that highly enriched uranium particles found in Iran were from smuggled Pakistani centrifuge parts rather than enrichment work by Iran, diplomats said.

Pakistan had in May sent centrifuge parts to the Vienna headquarters of the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to enable it to compare microscopic traces of uranium on them with that found on equipment in Iran.

The IAEA has concluded that “the highly enriched uranium appears to emanate from Pakistan,” from the imported equipment and not from Iranian enrichment work, a Western diplomat close to the IAEA told AFP.

Enriched uranium, made by passing a uranium gas through a series, or cascade, of centrifuge machines, can be fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors or, in highly refined form, the raw material for atom bombs.

The diplomat said on Saturday that a “Pakistani delegation is coming to Vienna to begin talks on Monday with IAEA safeguards officials to review the IAEA findings.”

The IAEA’s ruling out that Iran was doing work that could have produced weapons-grade uranium “will be seen by those in favour of Iran as another checkmark in their column” to back up Tehran’s rebuttals of US charges that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons, the diplomat said.

The father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, has admitted to running an international nuclear black market ring that supplied Iran with atomic technology and parts.

The IAEA has since February 2003 been investigating US charges that the Iran, which says its nuclear programme is a peaceful effort to generate electricity, has a covert weapons programme.

The diplomat said the talks with the Pakistanis were part of a review of the IAEA findings that will later in the month also involve independent experts.

Pakistan in May insisted that the centrifuge parts it sent to the IAEA remained technically under its control and would be brought back home by Pakistani experts, a second diplomat said.—AFP