The director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said the Vienna talks helped partly clarify the ambiguities raised by the US fact sheet on the contents of a joint statement released on April 2 to announce a landmark understanding with the major powers on Tehran's nuclear program.
"In this round of talks, the ambiguities raised in the American fact sheet were to some extent clarified," Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview with state television on Saturday, IRNA reported.
The three-day talks in the Austrian capital to start writing the text of the final deal, whose details are set to be worked out by June 30, ended on Friday.
Salehi declined to disclose further details, saying that it is feared they may be misused by some foreigners, including Israel.
"When the deal is concluded and the results are announced, more details will be presented," he said, calling on the Iranian people to put their trust in the negotiators and rest assured that they "are pursuing national interests."
On the decision not to issue an official fact sheet, Salehi explained, "The Iranian negotiating team may have had some justifiable reasons to feel no need to release a fact sheet."
"In the current conditions, some people outside of Iran can take advantage of an Iranian fact sheet to create disruption" in the process of negotiations.
He referred to the US fact sheet, saying, "The ambiguities therein were removed to some extent in the Vienna talks. Correct and incorrect points had been confused, creating anxiety."
A lot of criticism was directed at the negotiating team after the release of the statement by opponents who cited the US interpretation of the statement's terms contained in their fact sheet to accuse the negotiators of failure to have Iran's full rights recognized in the initial agreement, claiming that the original text and the translated Persian version of the statement were inconsistent.
***Subjective Interpretation
The AEOI director dismissed the US demand that Iran should accept tougher inspections of its sites under the prospective deal than those in the case of North Korea as a move to influence the public opinion to its own advantage, saying the United States is making a "subjective" and "unilateral" interpretation of the terms of the Additional Protocol.
Under the Additional Protocol, the International Atomic Energy Agency has complementary inspection authority to that provided in underlying safeguards agreements and, therefore, is granted expanded rights of access to information and sites.
US officials have repeatedly demanded that any final deal should give the IAEA free access to Iran's military sites, something that Iran rejects.
Iran's opposition to the demand has been stressed in remarks by some officials, particularly in a speech by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei about two weeks ago, in which he said, "The outsiders must not be allowed to penetrate the country's security and military premises under the excuse of inspections."
Their demand must be documented and even if so, Iran will still be entitled to decide whether to allow the inspection of its military centers, he noted.
Elsewhere, Salehi said the Fordo site was built to "guarantee the continuation of (uranium) enrichment" and it was not aimed at "carrying out industrial enrichment."
"This facility has made possible the operation of three thousand IR-1 machines," which can generate three percent of 190,000 SWUs (Separative Work Units) uranium enrichment capacity required to fuel Iran's existing power plants and reactors.
In addition, he said the Arak facility has not been constructed to produce enriched uranium, but it is a research reactor and "will be redesigned to keep serving as a heavy water research reactor."
