VIENNA, Oct 24: Iran admits to failures in honouring nuclear safeguards commitments, in a new report filed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but still denies trying to develop nuclear weapons, the Iranian representative to the United Nations’ atomic watchdog said on Friday.

The statement by Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, was a first indication of the contents of the report, which was submitted by Iran on Thursday, just a week before the IAEA’s Oct 31 deadline for the Islamic Republic to prove it is not secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Mr Salehi said there were disclosures in the report of “what could be considered failures” to adhere to the safeguards regime of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory.

He said these were “in the same line” as failures by Iran the IAEA had listed in a report in June.

Mr Salehi said the new failures involved “some lab tests”, but he did not provide details.

He said the failures were “not significant, not of importance but we felt we had to reveal it anyway” in order to answer the IAEA’s questions about its nucelar activities.

“We are certain of what we are doing,” Salehi said.

“It is 100 per cent clear that Iran has never been involved in anything that would indicate it was involved in a nuclear weapons program,” Salehi said.

In June, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in a report: “Iran has failed to meet its obligations under its (NPT) safeguards agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material, the subsequent processing and use of that material and the declaration of facilities where the material was stored and processed”.

But he added: “These failures are in the process of being rectified by Iran.”

Mr Salehi said in June: “The crux of the (ElBaradei) report in front of us deals only with a small amount of 0.13 effective kilogram of natural uranium that we imported in 1991” and that was not reported at the time.

The United States accuses Iran of secretly working to manufacture highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make atomic bombs, and should be judged in non-compliance with the NPT regime, something which would oblige the IAEA to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council.

A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said Salehi’s disclosure Friday of safeguards failures “may be a result of being confronted by IAEA inspectors with evidence that was hard otherwise to justify.”

He said Iran seemed to be “clearly setting up their defense.”

Iran delivered its report to the UN nuclear watchdog Thursday in a bid to allay international concern about its nuclear program.

The report “fully discloses all our past peaceful activities in the nuclear field,” Salehi said at the time.

The IAEA board of governors is to meet on Nov 20 to hear ElBaradei’s latest report on Iranian compliance.

ElBaradei said the IAEA expected to have what was needed to verify Iran’s claim that traces of highly enriched uranium found in Iran were merely contamination imported on equipment bought abroad and not the result of production of uranium that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

“We should know the origins of equipment and materials,” ElBaradei said.

But Salehi said Iran could not give the origin of this equipment. “We bought it on the black market so how can we trace it,” he said.

But he said IAEA inspectors had “been given access to the equipment” in Iran.

Diplomats said the origin of the equipment could possibly be traced by the IAEA through serial numbers. —AFP