Iran expects progress will be made in talks this week with the United Nations' atomic agency, Tehran's nuclear envoy said, but Western diplomats held out little hope of an end to the deadlock, Reuters reported.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been trying for more than a year to coax Iran into letting it resume a stalled investigation into suspected atomic bomb research by Tehran, which denies any aims to make nuclear weapons.
The talks in Vienna on Wednesday, May 15, will be the 10th round of negotiations between the two sides since early 2012, so far without an agreement that would give the IAEA the access to sites, officials and documents it says it needs for its inquiry.
"We have the meeting with the expectation of progress of course," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, told Reuters. "We are serious in these talks."
But a Western diplomat, also based in the Austrian capital, said he saw "no reason at all for optimism" in view of a series of failed meetings in the last 17 months. Other envoys also said they did not expect any breakthrough.
In May one year ago, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said after visiting Tehran that he expected to sign a deal with Iran soon to unblock the inquiry, but that hope was later dashed.
Western officials accuse Iran of stonewalling the IAEA, and of seeking to restrict the ability of UN inspectors to carry out their investigation the way they want.
Iran says the demands for access go beyond its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that the allegations against it are based on forged intelligence.
Also on Wednesday, negotiators from the European Union and Iran will meet in Istanbul to discuss these diplomatic efforts, although analysts do not expect any substantive negotiations before Iran's presidential election on June 14.
