The chief UN nuclear inspector confirmed today that talks in Iran had failed to reach a deal on probing possible past atomic weapons research.

“Differences remain so we could not finalise” the agreement, Herman Nackaerts told reporters at Vienna airport.

“We have agreed with Iran that we will meet again on February 12 (in Tehran).”

Nackaerts, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, had said after his last visit to Tehran in December that he expected to conclude a deal this week after a year of fruitless efforts.

The IAEA conducts regular inspections of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, but it also wants access to what it believes are sites where undeclared activities aimed at developing nuclear weapons took place until 2003, and possibly since.

Nackaerts said that during the talks that “also on this occasion no access was granted to Parchin”, one of the sites the agency would like to visit.

Iran denies ever having worked on nuclear weapons and says that the IAEA’s evidence is based on faulty intelligence that it has not even been allowed to see.

It says that because no nuclear activities took place at Parchin, the IAEA has no business conducting inspections there and that it already went there twice in 2005.

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