TEHRAN - Inspectors from the UN's nuclear watchdog will visit Iran in the next few days to oversee the resumption of uranium enrichment, chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said yesterday.

Iran has decided to go ahead with enrichment, which it had suspended for over two years, after the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted on Saturday to report it to the UN Security Council. "In a letter to the agency (IAEA) we announced the date (for resuming enrichment) and the inspectors will come to Iran for it in the next few days," Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told reporters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a visit to Athens that cooperation with Iran must continue and that Tehran must not be threatened over the nuclear dispute. "The use of violence can only be proposed within the framework of UN rules," he told reporters via interpreters, Reuters news agency said. In Oslo, China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said diplomatic channels should still be used and urged Iran and the European Union to resume talks abandoned last month. "Time is already pressing and it's important to seize every minute and every day to address this sensitive issue," he said after talks with his Norwegian counterpart. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again struck a defiant tone in a speech yesterday. "They (Western countries) are very angry with us, but it's not important to us because they cannot do anything and we are not scared of anything," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted him as saying. "If they could do something against us, they would not have wasted time to prepare the stage," he added. Larijani said Tehran was still open to talks with the EU. "The door for negotiations is not closed ... but they should know that this demand (to have nuclear technology) is not something that one can step away from," he said. "Those who planned the IAEA's Board of Governors meeting against Iran should pay for their behavior," Larijani was also quoted as saying by IRNA. PIN/IRNA
کد خبر 79076