Mohamed El Baradei to visit Iran Saturday afternoon

TEHRAN - The outgoing Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei, will arrived late Saturday afternoon in Tehran and will begin talks Sunday with the authorities, said an Iranian official.

•     "Mr. El Baradei will arrive in Tehran on Saturday around 6:00 pm local time (02:30 pm GMT)," the head of the Iranian Organization for Atomic Energy (IAEC) told AFP on condition of anonymity.
  
      According to him, he will have talks with Iranian nuclear officials on Sunday before leaving Iran in the night from Sunday to Monday.
  
      Mr. El Baradei was invited Thursday in Iran by the Iranian authorities who have also agreed during discussions in Geneva on a visit "within two weeks" of IAEA inspectors on their second site of enrichment of uranium near Qom (center).
  
      The West suspects the Islamic Republic of wanting to build the atomic bomb through its civilian nuclear program, which Tehran denies formally. For six years the IAEA has been unable to formally establish the nature of the Iranian program.
  
      The Western doubts were fueled by the September 25 revelation of the existence of the site of Qom, which has been declared to the IAEA a few days earlier.
  
      Mohamed El Baradei said that the delay had put Iran "on the wrong side of the law."
  
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.