A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived Wednesday to carry out inspections at the Parchin facility which Iran had long kept off limits to the agency.

"We are watchful. We have allowed inspections into our military installations but we will not allow any espionage or the theft of information from our military sites," Hossein Mousavian, the spokesman for Iran's nuclear negotiations team, said in remarks carried by the Mehr news agency.

"It is not necessary for the inspectors to enter the installations. They are authorized to take samples outside (the buildings) using their equipment."

The IAEA team is due to stay in Iran for a week and start taking environmental samples from Parchin on Thursday, the student news agency ISNA said.

Tehran gave permission for inspectors to take so-called environmental samples from the Parchin site southeast of Tehran in order to disprove US allegations of secret weapons-related activities.

Environmental sampling involves taking swabs or soil samples to detect the presence of nuclear activity.

Parchin is an example of a so-called "transparency visit" where the IAEA is going beyond its mandate under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to check if nuclear materials have been diverted away from peaceful use.

Last week, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei announced that Iran had finally given the green light for his inspectors to probe Parchin. The IAEA has been seeking access to the site since July.

The United States has alleged the Iranians may be working on testing high-explosive charges with an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a sort of dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work.

Tehran has strongly denied carrying out any nuclear-related work at the site, and insists its nuclear drive is merely aimed at generating electricity.

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