Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered the conditional suspension of the additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Fars news agency reported Saturday. In a written order to his vice-president Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh, who is also head of the country's Atomic Energy Organization, Ahmadinejad called for the implementing of the recently approved law to suspend all voluntary cooperation with the IAEA if the Iranian nuclear case is referred to the United Nations Security Council. The Iranian parliament last month approved a bill urging the government to conditionally suspend the IAEA additional protocol. According to the bill, the government will be urged to limit or even stop IAEA inspection of Iranian nuclear sites if Teheran is referred to the Security Council. Ahmadinejad said last Wednesday that there should be no doubts whatsoever that the government will not retreat one inch from realising the legitimate right of the Iranian nation to have nuclear technology.
Experts from Iran and the European Union trio of Britain, France and Germany are scheduled to resume talks aimed at resolving Iran's nuclear crisis on December 21 in Vienna. The talks were suspended in August over Teheran's refusal to halt nuclear conversion, the first step in the nuclear cycle, at its Isfahan plant in central Iran. Iran says that it will not only continue the conversion process at Isfahan but will also push to start uranium enrichment at a neighbouring plant at Natanz.