Iran rejects news on agreement with IAEA for fresh dialogue

TEHRAN (ISNA)- Iran rejected rumors that it has reached an agreement with the UN nuclear agency over holding the next round of talks.

An official source close to the Iranian negotiating team told Press TV that no agreement had been reached between Iran and the UN nuclear agency over the date of a new round of talks.

The official further pointed out that the issue had been discussed in a meeting but no deal was reached.

On Thursday, the Associated Press quoted two anonymous diplomats as saying that Iran and the IAEA had agreed to hold new talks in mid-May.

Iran and the IAEA last met in Tehran in mid-February and mid-January.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.

The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA's questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.

Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.