IAEA chief: Iran sanctions will make life hard for nuclear agency

New sanctions against Iran would mean international nuclear inspectors have more a difficult job in the short term, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano told the German Press Agency.

Members of the UN Security Council are currently discussing further punitive measures to get Iran to halt its nuclear activities and to cooperate better with the IAEA's inspectors.

"As Iran quite often declares, they don't want to act under pressure," Director General Amano said in his first interview with an international media organization since he took office last year.

Pressure has led Iran to resist Security Council or IAEA resolutions and sanctions in the past. That means that, at times, Iran has reacted by restricting the agency's so-called safeguards inspections and not informing the nuclear watchdog about new facilities in a timely fashion.

But Amano did not wish to predict the long-term effects of new punitive steps.

"For now, a part of the comprehensive safeguards agreement is not implemented," Amano said about Tehran's binding inspection deal with the IAEA.


/Trend News/