Iran, IAEA agree on timeline

Tehran: Iran and the UN nuclear agency watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Tuesday they had agreed on a plan on how to help defuse Western suspicions about Tehran's atom work, a move hailed as a "milestone" by a senior IAEA official.

After two days of talks in Tehran, the two sides said they had drawn up a timeline for answering outstanding questions about Iran's nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at building atomic bombs. Iran insists its plans are peaceful.

But the United States, leading efforts to isolate Iran, has said Tehran must both cooperate with the UN inspectors and halt sensitive nuclear work, a step Iranian officials have rejected, if it wants to avoid a third round of UN sanctions.

"We have in front of us an agreed work plan. We agreed on modalities on how to implement it. We have a timeline for the implementation," IAEA deputy director Olli Heinonen said after the negotiations, which he described as "good and constructive."

Iran agreed in June to draw up an action plan within 60 days to grant more access to its nuclear sites for inspectors of the Vienna-based IAEA and clear up longstanding agency questions about the nature and scope of the program.

The UN body has long complained that Iran has stonewalled its inquiries into the murky history and scope of Tehran's nuclear activities and curbed inspector movements, preventing the agency from giving Tehran a clean bill of health.

Heinonen said work would start swiftly on implementing Tuesday's agreement, with activities later this month as well as in September and October. Details of the deal would be included in a report for the IAEA board by early September.

"We have a basic framework of agreement between Iran and the agency," Iranian deputy nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeedi told the joint news conference, saying talks yielded "great results," according to a translation of his words by Iran's PRESS TV.

"We are serious about implementing this," Vaeedi said.

In Washington, the State Department said the agreement was "insufficient" and does not bring Iran in line with demands by the U.N. Security Council to halt uranium enrichment, or face more penalties.

"Given Iran's failure to fulfill its UN Security Council requirement to immediately and verifiably suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, we believe the UN Security Council must move forward as soon as possible with additional sanctions," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said in a statement.

The latest discussions had been due to tackle some of the thorniest issues such as the origin of traces of highly enriched -- or bomb-grade -- uranium found on some equipment and the status of research into advanced centrifuges used in enrichment.