The message of continuity came two days after diplomats said that Rafael Grossi would quit as assistant director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a post which made him one of the UN agency’s most influential people.
Western diplomats blame Iranian stonewalling for the failure to come to an agreement, a charge Tehran denies.
The IAEA has called on Iran to sign and implement a structured approach document to resolve the outstanding issues and has stated that gaining access to the Parchin military site, which is located southeast of Tehran, is a priority for the UN nuclear watchdog.
The UN nuclear watchdog has claimed that Iran might have been trying to sanitize the Parchin site of any incriminating evidence of explosive tests that would indicate efforts to design nuclear weapons. However, Iran has dismissed the claim, calling it “baseless” and has made it clear that access to the site would not be possible before an agreement is reached on the structured approach document.
Some envoys said the Argentine diplomat’s sudden resignation announcement was a possible indication of personal or other differences among the leadership of the Vienna-based IAEA.
Other officials, however, said they had seen no sign of any such internal friction in the organization’s senior management.
Grossi is expected to leave his post in the early summer to become Argentina’s envoy to the IAEA, a diplomatic source told Reuters on Friday. The South American country is a member of the UN agency’s 35-nation governing board.
The IAEA confirmed on Sunday that Grossi, who also holds the position as chief of cabinet of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, had handed in his resignation and that the “timing of his departure will be defined very soon.”
Spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that Amano “confirms this departure will not change the positions and policies of the agency, including the on-going negotiations with Iran.”
Grossi is one of two senior IAEA officials who have been leading the agency’s efforts since early 2012 to persuade Iran to give its inspectors access to sites, officials, and documents for their inquiry.
His resignation means that both of them will leave the agency this year: the IAEA said last month that a senior Finnish official, Tero Varjoranta, would succeed chief IAEA nuclear inspector Herman Nackaerts when he retires in the early autumn.
But analysts and diplomats stress that it is Amano who decides policy. He steered the agency into a tougher approach to Iran and secured a second four-year term in March.
“It will be business as usual at the agency,” one diplomat in the Austrian capital predicted.
Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London, said Amano would not select replacements who “differed in substance” from Nackaerts and Grossi.
“The institutional norms and ways of doing business don’t easily change,” Fitzpatrick said.
The IAEA-Iran talks are separate from, but still closely linked to, broader diplomatic negotiations between Tehran and six world powers aimed at resolving the decade-old dispute peacefully.
Iran denies Western allegations that it is seeking to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons, saying its atomic activities are aimed at generating electricity.
EP/PA
MNA
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