IAEA: US report on Iran 'outrageous'

United Nations nuclear inspectors have attacked as "outrageous and dishonest" parts of a US congressional committee intelligence report on Iran's nuclear work.

A senior aide to Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - the UN's nuclear watchdog - sent a letter to Peter Hoekstra, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, complaining that the report included serious distortions of IAEA findings.

The letter said the errors suggested that Iran's nuclear fuel programme was much more advanced than a series of IAEA reports and Washington's own intelligence assessments had determined.

It also said the agency secretariat took "strong exception to the incorrect and misleading assertion" that the IAEA decided to remove a senior safeguards inspector for supposedly concluding that Iran intended to build nuclear weapons.

The congressional report contained "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion" the inspector was removed for having not stuck to an alleged IAEA policy barring its "officials from telling the whole truth" about Iran, said the letter.