Iran on "double standards" in nuclear affairs

It is important to shed double standards in nuclear affairs, Iran's spokesman to the International Atomic Energy Agency Ali Salehi told the IAEA Council of Managers during a session staged in Vienna.

"The 2002 Nuclear Safety Report prepared by the top executives of the IAEA shows that not one single member-state of the IAEA made its nuclear safety system perfect," he said.

It is a different matter that every country is ready to correct its blunders and shortcomings, he stressed.

"Our common goal in nuclear affairs is to solve problems, not turn them into knots of international contradiction," Salehi stated. "It is when it comes to this matter that we must evade using double standards and making some countries into outcasts of the world community by pinning labels on them." Iran has forbidden IAEA controllers to launch inspections on the country's territory before Teheran makes an official decision to sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which grants wide-ranging rights to IAEA inspectors, including the right to carry out surprise inspections, he reported.

The decision on the Iranian problem is likely to be made public on Friday, June 20, a source in the IAEA secretariat told RIA Novosti.