VIENNA, July 24: The UN's nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday that a team of inspectors would visit a heavy water Iranian reactor next week to address concerns over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.

Olli Heinonen, deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told journalists that the inspectors would visit the half-built plutonium-producing reactor either on Monday or Tuesday.

Heinonen was speaking after talks in Vienna with Iran's deputy national security chief Javad Vaeidi and IAEA ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh on finalising a plan to clarify ‘open issues’ associated with the scope and content of Iran's enrichment programme. “We had good discussions. We made constructive progress,” Vaeidi told reporters, adding that the next meeting would take place on August 20 in Tehran.

Iran said on July 13 that it would let IAEA inspectors visit the Arak reactor, which is currently under construction and should be completed by 2009.

The UN Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions to get Tehran to cease enriching uranium, to stop building Arak and to cooperate fully with IAEA inspectors — and there are calls for a third round.

Several diplomats have warned that Iran, by allowing inspections of Arak, might just be stalling in order to avoid more sanctions.

Iran has rejected any halt in its enrichment work, insisting that its nuclear activities are a peaceful effort to generate electricity.

The United States has led international charges that it is hiding a covert nuclear weapons programme.

Tuesday's talks had been aimed in part at agreeing a working framework of “precise rules” concerning any inspections of Tehran's nuclear facilities.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei hailed last week Tehran's decision to allow the inspections and its willingness to discuss its nuclear programme as “a positive move”.

“I hope that we will continue on that road,” he said during a visit to Malaysia.

—AFP