Iran rejects Western claims about nuclear activities at Parchin

Vahidi said on Monday that the accusations are “entirely irrelevant and irrational.”

    He noted that the allegations are aimed at affecting the upcoming negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 - Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany - scheduled to be held in Moscow on June 18 and 19.

The United States and some other Western countries had recently claimed that Iran demolished some structures at Parchin to cover up testing related to nuclear weapons.

Iran and the P5+1 held three sessions of plenary talks in Baghdad on May 23 and 24 after an earlier round of negotiations in the Turkish city of Istanbul in mid-April.

They agreed to hold expert-level preparatory meetings before the Moscow negotiations, in order to hammer out the agenda of those talks. The P5+1 representatives, however, did not respond to Iran's request for taking part in expert meetings which led Tehran to warn that the P5+1’s foot-dragging will undermine the entire negotiations process.

Tehran and the P5+1 had previously held two rounds of talks, one in Geneva in December 2010 and another in Istanbul in January 2011.

Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency held a round of talks in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on June 8, when the agency pressed Tehran for an agreement to give its inspectors immediate access to the Parchin military complex, where the agency claims explosive tests related to the development of nuclear weapons have taken place.

Iran rejects the Western allegations, saying that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.