By Mark Heinrich
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear agency chief said on Monday he was taking a factual approach to Iran's nuclear work after he caused a stir last month by suggesting Tehran may be trying now to develop a nuclear-armed missile. Yukiya Amano did not repeat that position in his first address to the agency's governing body in a possible effort to dampen tensions after a developing nation bloc, to which Iran belongs, suggested his report was not sufficiently balanced.
Iranian officials have made personal attacks on Amano, suggesting he was being manipulated by its U.S.-led Western adversaries, something diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency strongly deny.
Diplomats said Amano was simply shifting the agency to a more direct, blunt form of dealing with Iran from the cautious ambivalence of predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei, who was wary of Western intelligence driving the IAEA's probe of Tehran.
Amano's harder-hitting line is important because it is expected to buttress deliberations on slapping harsher sanctions on Iran taking place among the six world powers at the level of the U.N. Security Council. "It (my first report) is longer than previous reports because I wanted my first report to be a standalone document. I tried to make it factual," Amano told the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors, opening a weeklong closed-door meeting.
"We cannot confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities because Iran has not provided the Agency with the necessary cooperation," he said.
This would entail obeying resolutions by the IAEA board and U.N. Security Council to suspend nuclear fuel production to create confidence for talks, allowing unfettered, short-notice U.N. inspections and opening up to IAEA inspectors looking into suspected military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme.
"I request Iran to take steps towards the full implementation of its (nuclear) safeguards agreement (with the IAEA) and its other obligations as a matter of high priority.
AMANO CALLS OUT IRAN
Amano's February 18 report said that the IAEA suspected Iran was pursuing activities relevant to developing nuclear weapons now, rather than only having done so in the past.
Iran denies ever seeking nuclear bomb capability, saying its uranium enrichment drive is only for peaceful energy purposes.
Iranian officials were expected to argue before IAEA governors that his report showed Amano lacks experience, competence and independence from Western powers, who are drafting harsher U.N. sanctions on Tehran.
Amano omitted Iran's repeated flat denials and denunciations of "forged" information and did not flag that the intelligence was not fully authenticated, as ElBaradei's reports often did.
ElBaradei's report also noted, however, that Iran's position was unacceptable because it was not substantiating it with exonerating evidence or by providing access for inspectors to Iranian sites cited in Western intelligence reports.
IAEA governors were not expected to rebuke Iran in a resolution as they did at their last meeting in November, when Iran was censured for hiding a uranium enrichment site.
But Western nations were likely to condemn it over an IAEA complaint that Iran had begun feeding low-enriched uranium (LEU) into centrifuges for higher refinement before inspectors could get to the scene at its Natanz pilot enrichment facility.
Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told reporters on Monday his country had moved a stock of enriched uranium back underground after drawing what it needed to refine the material up to 20 percent purity.
Iran has said its move to feed LEU into centrifuges for further refinement is for peaceful purposes so that it can make fuel for nuclear medicine.
Iran's enrichment escalation has unnerved the West since advancing from 20 percent to the bomb-grade level of 90 percent purity would need only a few months, much faster than reaching the initial 3.5 percent stage suitable for power plants.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
