TEHRAN - Iran’s atomic chief has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to increase technical cooperation with Iran to compensate for years of opportunities lost due to allegations against Tehran for its nuclear program.

“During the ten to twelve years that they created the fabricated case, we lost the opportunities for technical cooperation with the Agency,” Ali Akbar Salehi said in a joint press conference with IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in Tehran.

“I asked Mr. Amano to have this issue compensated for through the measures they take,” Salehi said, noting that the two sides have entered a new phase after the recent implementation of the nuclear deal finalized between Tehran and world powers back in July 2015.

“In our talks today, it was agreed that we will look into the future, and what was in the past would remain behind us,” noted Salehi.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Salehi expressed the hope that the AEOI would provide the Iranian nation with good news on the modernization of the Arak reactor in the near future, maybe within a week.

“The preliminaries of what we designed have been inspected by the other sides,” Salehi added.

“We are ahead of the planned schedule, everything is going well, and we hope that the modernization of Arak would come into effect even earlier than the plan,” the Iranian nuclear chief went on to say.

SP/P