UN inspectors visited the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz on Tuesday, diplomats said, but it was not clear if they resolved a dispute over monitoring a strategic underground bunker.
"The inspectors were able to carry out their inspection work in Iran on Tuesday," said a diplomat close to the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who like others asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
A second diplomat said the IAEA experts visited the underground bunker where Iran is building an industrial-scale plant to make enriched uranium, which can be used for nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material.
Iran had stopped IAEA inspectors from visiting Natanz on Saturday, in a move a third diplomat said was designed to hide work they have done underground in installing centrifuges, the machines which spin at supersonic speeds to enrich urnaium.
There is also a pilot enrichment plant above-ground which since April 2006 has been doing research-level amounts of enrichment.
Iran has refused to let the IAEA install cameras to monitor the hall where the Iranians have already set up hundreds of centrifuges deep underground to protect them against any air strike.
But Iran had promised "frequent inspector access" to the site, the IAEA reported in February.
The highly sensitive inspections, and talks over how they are to take place, come as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was expected to plead Tehran's case this week before the UN Security Council, which is considering tightening sanctions on the Islamic republic over fears that it seeks nuclear weapons.
Iran's blocking access to Natanz would be a violation of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had reported on February 22 that Iran was at the underground site spinning centrifuges empty, without uranium feedstock gas, in two 164-centrifuge production lines, and was finishing installing two other similar cascades, also totalling 328 centrifuges.
ElBaradei said the IAEA had "agreed to interim verification arrangements" at Natanz's underground site "involving frequent inspector access but not remote monitoring."
"Iran was informed that these arrangements (which are now in place) would be valid only for as long as the number of machines installed... did not exceed 500, and that, once that number was exceeded, all required safeguards measures would need to be implemented," ElBaradei said.
A diplomat said Iran did not want the IAEA to see "that it now has more than 500 centrifuges functioning underground" and that was the reason for Saturday's delay.
Iran has challenged the agency "to provide a detailed legal basis" for putting in cameras, as it contests the legality of the 500-centrifuge limit, according to the report.
Tehran has defied the UN's calls to suspend uranium enrichment, insisting that its nuclear programme is a peaceful effort to generate electricity.
Iran warned Monday that it would make a "proportionate" response to any new UN sanctions.
Diplomats in Vienna speculated that cutting off access to Natanz might be part of this response.
The Security Council is to meet Wednesday to review a draft resolution against Iran agreed last week by the body's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany.
New sanctions would include barring Iran from exporting arms and buying weapons such as missiles.
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