IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, accompanied by Mr. Olli Heinonen, Deputy Director General for Safeguards and Mr. Vilmos Cserveny, Director for External Relations and Policy Coordination, visited Teheran from 11 to 12 January 2008.
During meetings with senior officials, that included meetings with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, discussion took place on ways and means to accelerate implementation of safeguards in Iran as well as additional confidence-building measures. While progress in the implementation of the workplan agreed between the IAEA Secretariat and Iran in August 2007 was noted, an agreeement was reached on the timeline for implementation of all the remaining verification issues specified in the workplan. According to the agreed schedule implementation of the workplan should be completed in the next four weeks.
During the visit discussion also took place on the importance of the implementation of the Additional Protocol as well as on other confidence-building measures called for by the Security Council. Furthermore, Iran also provided information on its research and development activities on a new generation of centrifuges.