Iran has opened a high-security military site to U.N. nuclear inspectors who also met senior personnel at the facility, an Iranian official said Sunday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the approval was given to the inspectors after they requested to visit the Parchin military site, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Tehran. "This was not the first time. They had visited Parchin before. This time they asked to visit other areas of the site," Asefi told reporters during his weekly press conference. "They talked with our friends this time. What they have done in Iran has been in the framework of the NPT (nuclear nonproliferation treaty) and safeguards," he said without elaborating, according to a report of the Associated Press. Asefi said that Iran was reviewing a Russian proposal for joint production of nuclear fuel and is ready to review any further plans. Iran's offer of foreign participation in Iran's nuclear program, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raised in September, was the best way to assure the world about Iran's peaceful intentions, Asefi said. On Saturday, Iran approved a resolution accepting foreign participation in its nuclear enrichment plant in Natanz, central Iran. Before the next IAEA board meeting on Nov. 24, inspectors also hope to visit Lavizan-Shian.
