Sept. 13, 2007 (LPAC) -- Speaking at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting yesterday in Vienna, the Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh cleared up several remaining issues regarding Iran's nuclear program, IRNA reported. He said that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei's latest report on Iran was a "major step forward," adding that the Iranian initiative has brought a new atmosphere for Iran-IAEA cooperation. "Iran is hopeful for maintenance of the current friendly atmosphere created after signing of the modality plan and at the same time the political atmosphere is well-prepared for the special states to go ahead with talks with Iran." He criticized certain states for "questioning the merits of the Iran-IAEA modality agreement," meaning the U.S. and U.K.

Soltanieh reviewed the main points of the IAEA-Iran agreement, referencing the Safeguards Approach and the Facility Attachment for the enrichment facility at Natanz, as well as inspections at the Heavy Water Research Reactor in Arak and Iran's having issued multiple annual visas for the inspectors and the staff members of the IAEA. Regarding other issues -- plutonium experiments, P1 and P2, origins of contamination, uranium metal documents, and polonium 210 and the Ghachine mine -- he said, "Iran has agreed to start implementation of the first remaining issue -- plutonium experiments." Here he nailed the U.S. for claiming that the program was a military one. "Despite Iran's continued assertions that no further experiments have been made and the materials and information provided to the agency are comprehensive and correct, a certain state tried to make a big political issue out of it, and declared repeatedly in the course of the meetings of the Board of Governors during the past four years that that issue illustrates the developing threat of Iran's plutonium weapons program." He concluded by referring to the important statement in the IAEA-Iran agreement, and in ElBaradei's latest report on Iran, that the agency confirmed that the past declaration of Iran is consistent with the agency's finding, and thus the matter is resolved.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has raised new charges against Iran, accusing it of having provided the weapons for an attack on Camp Victory. The U.S. military said the attack had been launched from an area of Baghdad under the control of Moqtadar al-Sadr, thus demonstrating that his announced ceasefire was a fraud. The aim is to prove Iranian authorship of such attacks in order to justify a military attack, now that the nuclear file is being dealt with diplomatically.

In a parallel development, John Bolton, now at AEI, told U.S. News & World Report that he "prefers regime change" in Iran.