Iran to allow access to Marivan nuclear site: official

TEHRAN (Xinhua) - Iran is ready to allow UN nuclear inspectors to access the Marivan nuclear site, a facility suspected of being used to develop explosive weapons, the spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Behrouz Kamalvandi, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency on Saturday.

"We are ready to provide a controlled access to the Marivan site to prove the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activity," Kamalvandi told IRNA, as the country's nuclear negotiators are engaged in intensive talks with the powers in Vienna of Austria to break the impasse in a run up for a nuclear deal ahead of Monday's deadline.

The Marivan site, close to the Iraqi border, was referred to in a 2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. However, Kamalvandi said that the report was based on "false information and unfortunately the Agency insists on that."

Besides Marivan, the UN nuclear watchdog has also been suspecting that Iran's Parchin military base could be used for similar nuclear test, but Iran has so far denied access to Parchin.

As the Iranian nuclear talks entered the final days in Vienna, top diplomats from Iran and the West were trying to seize the best opportunity they have had in the past years to clinch a historic deal to put an end to the lasting marathon of Iran's nuclear issue.

In July, Iran and the P5+1 group, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, decided to postpone the resolution deadline to Nov. 24 to find a solution to Iran's nuclear debate.