VIENNA, 5 December 2004 — UN nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei angrily denied yesterday charges he had collaborated with Iran ahead of publishing written reports on his investigation of the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program.

“We never show a report to any single member” of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), “not the least of course an inspected country,” El-Baradei told AFP in a telephone interview.

El-Baradei was reacting to news reports that he had heeded Iranian demands to drop mentions of IAEA requests to visit the Parchin military site and Iran’s use of the strategically sensitive metal beryllium in a report he had made to the IAEA board on Sept. 1.

AFP had in September quoted a US official as saying El-Baradei had done this and there have been further such allegations in the media since then.

The United States wants the IAEA to take Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions for what Washington says is a covert nuclear weapons program but El-Baradei says the “jury is still out” on whether Tehran’s program is peaceful or not.

Diplomats said there were elements in the administration of US President George W. Bush who feel El-Baradei, who is Egyptian and a Muslim, is too soft on Iran and oppose his winning a third term in 2005 as IAEA chief.

The official US position is that heads of international organizations should not serve more than two terms, as El-Baradei will have done by next year.

El-Baradei said it was a “gutter accusation” to accuse him of an Islamist bias. He said whether a country he works on “is Muslim or Buddhist makes not an iota of difference,” especially since IAEA reports are a “collective process” involving international teams of experts.

“All the Arab, Israeli, US, North Korean, Iraqi and Iranian media are criticizing me at one point or another and this just might show that we are doing the right thing,” El-Baradei said, referring also to IAEA investigations of North Korea and Iraq’s nuclear programs.

El-Baradei also characterized as “gutter accusations” reports that he gives Iran advance looks at his reports, which are filed ahead of IAEA board of governors meetings that decide how tough the agency will be on Tehran over its nuclear program.

“We don’t leak (special IAEA reports on Iran) to any single person outside the 10 or 20 people who are involved in the process,” of drafting the text at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, El-Baradei said.

“We don’t negotiate our report ... at the end of the day not a single paragraph is shown to any single country until the report is out,” El-Baradei said.

He said the IAEA did not “even discuss” the report ahead of time with Iran beyond technical requests for information.

Meanwhile, three Iranian reformist journalists released in the past days have written letters of repentance, saying they were “brainwashed” by foreigners and “counter-revolutionaries”, press reports said in Tehran yesterday.