VIENNA, Sept 12: Iran said on Monday it would cooperate fully with UN atomic inspectors provided it was allowed to make nuclear fuel, according to a document presented on Monday to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and obtained by AFP.

Iran also blasted as misleading an IAEA report which said Iran was “overdue” in providing full cooperation with the agency’s two-and-a-half-year-old investigation into Iranian nuclear activities.

The IAEA on Aug 11 called on Iran to stop nuclear fuel activities in order to resume talks with the European Union on guaranteeing its nuclear programme is peaceful, as Tehran claims it is. The United States says it believes Tehran is running a covert atomic weapons programme.

The agency’s 35-nation board of governors is to meet next Monday, with the United States and the EU seeking to send the Islamic Republic before the UN Security Council, which could impose penalties, if Tehran persists in the fuel activities. Tehran is a signatory to the NPT.

Iran “declares that it is determined to continue its full cooperation with the IAEA ... provided that Iran is not deprived from its inalienable rights for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including nuclear fuel cycle,” Tehran said in the document.

Iran also said it had serious concerns about the misunderstandings, confusions, misperceptions about Iran’s nuclear programme made by some nations, in an apparent reference to the United States and EU nations.

It was Iran’s first detailed reaction to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s Sept 2 report, which said critical questions remained about Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The IAEA report also said that in early August Iran resumed fuel cycle work, which it had suspended last November in order to start the talks with EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany.—AFP