Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited a uranium-enrichment plant in southeastern Brazil amid an impasse over inspection of the nuclear facility.

The Brazilian authorities denied that the visit of three IAEA experts represented an inspection of the Nuclear Fuel Plant of the Brazil Nuclear Industries (INB), located in Resende, Rio de Janeiro state.

For almost a year, the UN nuclear agency has been discussing with the Brazilian government conditions for access of inspectors to its nuclear facilities.

"We agreed on the details of the visit, which will allow them to say whether our plant conforms with the blueprints and design information that we sent IAEA before construction," said Odair Dias Gonzalves, president of the Brazilian National Commission of Nuclear Energy, after meeting with the IAEA inspectors Monday.

The experts from France, the United States and South Africa will not be allowed to see the centrifuges' frame, but only tubes and valves leading to the centrifuges.

Brazilian officials said they want to keep secret an efficient uranium enrichment process at the Resende plant, whose technology and design are said to be developed solely by Brazil.

Brasilia was awaiting IAEA's permission to start producing enriched uranium used to fuel the nuclear power plants Angra I and II, which supply 4.3 percent of the country's electricity.

IAEA's official position, by now, is to keep the internationally-applied levels as for transparency.

"We're insisting on visual access that would be sufficient to rule out any diversion of nuclear material from that plant," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming in Vienna.

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2004)