MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. Russia is orienting its Iranian partners towards a more substantial approach to talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on clearing up issues related to the implementation of an agreement on guarantees, Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said at a press conference on Wednesday.

According to him, the IAEA Secretariat has questions for Iran related to the implementation of obligations to the agency under the safeguards agreement. "The Iranians do not reject dialogue, but, according to the majority of the agency’s members and in our opinion as well, they should conduct more focused negotiations and resolve all these issues," he noted. "This is doable. We are preparing our Iranian friends to get involved in this in a more substantial way," the diplomat added.

The envoy noted that the absence of progress in clarifying these issues is a "strong irritant with regards to Iran on the IAEA’s agenda."

"Nobody needs to keep these issues on the agenda, as they have been raised at every session of the IAEA Board of Governors for years," Ulyanov stressed. "It’s time to put an end to this. The process is not moving along swiftly but I would like to hope that it will speed up and by the beginning of next year these unresolved issues will be cleared up," he explained.

Questions, not complaints

The diplomat added that the IAEA Secretariat has questions for Tehran related to discovering particles of undeclared nuclear material, man-made uranium, in several locations in Iran.

"By all appearances, 20 years ago, the Iranians were conducting some undeclared nuclear activity there: nothing terrible, judging by the scale of remaining traces," Ulyanov explained. "The Iranians themselves curbed this activity 20 years ago. From the point of view of non-proliferation there are no threats or risks seen here, no matter how much some opponents of the nuclear deal try to make a mountain out of a molehill," he said.

"Yet there is another aspect - the agreement on Iran’s guarantees and obligations to the agency and there are problems with this," Ulyanov asserted. "Yet these are not complaints but precisely the questions on the part of the IAEA Secretariat which need to be answered," he concluded.