A high-level UN nuclear agency delegation will visit Iran in late January to try to clear up allegations of a covert weapons programme and soothe tensions between Tehran and the West, diplomats said on Friday.
The visit for talks led by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief inspector Herman Nackaerts would last from the 28th through the first week of February, a Western diplomat siad.
Another envoy said the trip, two months after an IAEA report on Iran took suspicions to a new level that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons, also said it would "likely" be from January 28, although it was not yet definite.
The delegation would include alongside the Belgian Nakaerts, the IAEA's senior legal official Peri Lynne Johnson, an American, and Rafael Grossi, the Argentine deputy director general of the Vienna-based watchdog, the diplomat said.
"The aim of this mission is to try to get answers once and for all to all the questions raised by the IAEA's report in November," one of the diplomats told AFP on condition of anonymity.
An IAEA spokesman declined to comment.
Iran denies seeking atomic weapons, saying its programme is peaceful, but Western countries strongly suspect otherwise and the UN Security Council has slapped four rounds of sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Ali Larijani, the influential speaker of Iran's parliament, said Thursday during a visit to Turkey that his country stood ready for negotiations with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany.
In its November 8 report, rubbished as "baseless" by Iran, the IAEA had said it was able to build an overall impression that Tehran "carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device."
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