A high-level UN nuclear agency delegation will visit Iran late this month to try to clear up claims of covert weapons activities that have stoked tensions between Tehran and the West, diplomats said Friday.
The trip led by International Atomic Energy Agency chief inspector Herman Nackaerts and the agency's number two Rafael Grossi would last from January 28 through the first week of February, one Western diplomat told AFP.
Another envoy also said the visit, two months after an IAEA report on Iran took suspicions to a new level that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons, would "likely" be from January 28, although it was not yet definite.
There was also some "ambiguity" on whether the delegation would merely hold talks with Iranian officials or be able to visit sites covered in the IAEA's bombshell November 8 report, the second diplomat said.
"It may be that the Iranians just want a short discussion in Tehran, which would not be what the IAEA is looking for," the envoy told AFP on condition of anonymity.
An IAEA spokesman declined to comment. Iran's ambassador, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, who said in December he would hold talks with the IAEA in Vienna this month about a visit, was not immediately available to say any more.
The delegation would include alongside the Belgian Nakaerts and the Argentine Grossi -- IAEA head Yukiya Amano's chief of staff -- the body's senior legal official Peri Lynne Johnson, a US citizen, envoys 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," the first diplomat told AFP, without wishing to be identified.
Iran is already subject to regular safeguards inspections of its uranium enrichment facilities, with IAEA inspectors having already visited the country this year.
But this trip could cover sites where other activites are alleged to have taken place that could be relevant to the development of a nuclear bomb. The last time Nackaerts visited was in the second half of last year.
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