VIENNA, Aug 22: UN atomic agency inspectors and Pakistani technicians met in Vienna on Monday to review the agency’s findings that weapons-grade uranium particles found in Iran were from smuggled Pakistani centrifuge parts rather than enrichment work by Iran, a Pakistani source said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) findings back Iran’s claims that it was not involved in enrichment work that the United States says would show that the Islamic Republic is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The IAEA inspectors and the Pakistanis are “discussing matters pertaining to the Iranian contamination issue,” the source, who is close to the Vienna-based IAEA and asked not to named due to the sensitivity of the talks, told AFP.

The source said from three to five technical people have come from Pakistan for the talks which were taking place on Monday and were to continue this week as part of Islamabad’s “ongoing cooperation with the IAEA.”

They are “looking at data,” the source said.

Pakistan had in May sent centrifuge parts to IAEA to enable it to compare microscopic traces of uranium on them with that found on identical equipment in Iran.

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

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 father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, 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 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, ahead of a report on Iran to be filed September 3 to the agency’s 35-nation board of governors.—AFP