IAEA Director sees progress with Iran inquiry

By Alaa Shahine

CAIRO (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Sunday he was making progress in finishing an inquiry into Iran's nuclear past ahead of his next report awaited by those powers mulling new sanctions.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei also said he was still hopeful Iran would allow broader IAEA inspections to shed light on its present program, which the West fears has a covert purpose to produce atom bombs.

"We are going to have my next report to the (IAEA) Board (of Governors) sometime around the end of this month," he told reporters in Cairo after talks with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

"We are making good progress in resolving the remaining outstanding issues of the past," said ElBaradei, whose verdict on Iranian cooperation will influence the extent of more U.N. sanctions against Tehran being prepared by world powers.

Iran, a major oil exporter which hid efforts to enrich uranium from the IAEA until 2003, says its nuclear energy program is solely for generation of electricity.

Its defiance of U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend enrichment and show complete transparency about its program led to two batches of limited sanctions. World powers have drafted broader measures as they await ElBaradei's report.

During a rare Tehran visit by ElBaradei on January 11-12, Iran agreed to answer remaining questions in a long-stalled inquiry into past nuclear activities by mid-February.

It also handed over some information on efforts to produce "a new generation" of centrifuges able to refine uranium much faster, and for the first time allowed ElBaradei and aides to visit a workshop developing such centrifuges, diplomats said.