Vienna---With the top US and Iranian diplomats meeting Saturday in Geneva one month before a deadline for a historic nuclear deal, demands for UN inspections of Iranian military bases appear to be becoming a problem.
Tehran is uneasy about letting foreigners go poking around such sites, saying that since no nuclear material is present, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) watchdog has no right to enter them.
But the six powers negotiating with Iran want the IAEA to be able to visit them in order to investigate claims of any suspicious activity -- past and future -- that could indicate attempts to build a bomb.
"The Western powers cannot accept a deal that precludes IAEA access to military sites," Mark Fitzpatrick, International Institute for Strategic Studies analyst, told AFP, calling it "politically indefensible".
Last week supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tehran "will not allow any inspections of military sites by foreigners" or the "interrogation" of nuclear scientists by the Vienna-based IAEA.
France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius shot back on Wednesday, saying any deal without access to military sites "will not be accepted".
This prompted a rebuke on Thursday by Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who called on "my negotiating partners to refrain from making excessive demands".
"People need to have their foot in reality, not in illusions," said Zarif, who is due to hold talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva on Saturday.
- Framework deal -
On April 2 Iran and the "P5+1" -- the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany -- agreed to the main outlines of a deal that they hope will end the long-running crisis over Iran's nuclear programme.
Diplomats as well as technical and legal experts have been working hard in Vienna and elsewhere since then to turn the outlines into a final accord by June 30.
If it can be finalised, the deal will see Iran dramatically scale down its nuclear activities to make any dash to make a bomb virtually impossible.
Iran maintains that its nuclear activities are only for peaceful purposes.
The deal will see the IAEA keep even closer tabs than it already does on Iran's nuclear sites -- which Iran accepts, according to April's joint statement issued in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In return, painful sanctions will be lifted.
But the IAEA also wants Iran to address indications that before 2003, and possibly since, Iran's nuclear programme had what it calls "possible military dimensions".
A probe into these allegations, rejected by Iran, has been stalled since August, an IAEA report confirmed Friday. One of the sites it wants to inspect is the Parchin military base.
AFP
