TEHRAN, March 5 (UPI) -- The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has allowed politics to cloud its work on Iran's nuclear issues, Tehran officials charge.
The IAEA was accused of having "clearly strayed from its expected statutory mandate," Press-TV news reported.
Iran's IAEA Ambassador Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh criticized the agency for passing a politically motivated judgment on the country's uranium enrichment.
"The agency was founded with a declared goal of promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Soltaniyeh told the nuclear monitoring group's 35-nation board of governors, "but we see now that safeguard efforts and world politics have unfortunately outstripped its true objectives."
His claims came one day after the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany invited Tehran for direct talks on its nuclear program.
