The US ambassador to the United Nations nuclear watchdog walked out of an agency meeting yesterday in protest when Iran’s representative accused Washington’s ally Israel of “genocide”, diplomats said.

Officials from Canada and Australia also left the closed-door meeting of the Inter-national Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 35-nation governing board when Iran’s Ali Asghar Soltanieh made his statement during a debate on Syria, they said.

They later returned to the meeting, where such action is unusual though it has happened before in other international forums.

Soltanieh was not immediately available for comment. Iran has often criticised Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.

It has also said Israel would be wiped “off the face of the earth” if the Jewish state attacked it.

US envoy Joseph Macmanus’s walkout highlighted tensions with Tehran a few hours after he accused the Islamic Republic of a “commitment to deception, defiance, and delay” in addressing IAEA concerns about possible nuclear weapons-related research.

The European Union also used the meeting to call on Iran to stop obstructing an IAEA investigation and give the agency access to sites and documents, regardless of broader talks between Iran and world powers that resumed last week.

Some diplomats say Iran is using its meetings with the IAEA merely for leverage in negotiations with world powers which, unlike the UN agency, have the power to ease sanctions that they have recently tightened on the major oil producer.

“Iran is inviting further isolation, pressure and censure from the international community ... until it meets its obligations and addresses the board’s concerns,” Macmanus said.