Here’s another success story for the United Nations and their blind, toothless nuclear watchdog the IAEA: Saudis in Talks on Nuclear Agreement. (Hat tip: Ethel.)

VIENNA, Austria - Saudi Arabia has quietly begun talks on a U.N.-sanctioned agreement that could curtail any outside probe of its atomic intentions - a move that heightens concerns in a region already edgy about rival Iran’s nuclear program.

The Saudis deny any plans to develop nuclear weapons, and diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency told The Associated Press that the U.N. nuclear monitor has no firm evidence that would cast doubt on the Saudi assertions. Phone calls to the Saudi representative to the IAEA or the government in Riyadh for comment were not returned.

But the diplomats say that past Saudi nuclear interest is heightening worries, as is the timing of the efforts to sign on to the IAEA’s small quantities protocol that would exempt the country from most of the agency’s control authority.

Born of more trusting days, the agreement has been joined by dozens of countries, most of which have never experimented with nuclear weapons. But the protocol is now viewed with suspicion within the agency, after revelations of other loopholes that have allowed prewar Iraq, Iran, Libya and other countries to work secretly on known or suspected nuclear weapons programs.

The protocol frees countries from reporting the possession of up to 10 tons of natural uranium - or up to 20 tons of depleted uranium, depending on the degree of enrichment - and 2.2 pounds of plutonium. It also allows them to keep silent about work on nuclear facilities secret until six months before they are ready for operation. And once a protocol is signed, the country’s word is normally not questioned.

Experts say 10 tons of natural uranium can be processed into the material for up to two nuclear warheads. And Iran and South Korea both used substantially smaller amounts of uranium or plutonium in laboratory-scale experiments with suspected links to arms programs.

Saudi Arabia has never negotiated an agreement that would define IAEA controls, even though it is obligated to do so as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Such foot dragging, and now the move to sign on to a small quantities protocol, have contributed to concerns about the protocol within top IAEA echelons.

“As has become clear over the last several years, states can conduct nuclear activities of proliferation concern with quantities of nuclear material much smaller” than allowed under the protocol, Pierre Goldschmidt, a deputy IAEA director general, said in a report in February.

Goldschmidt’s comments - and similar statements from IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei - reflect an agency drive to close loopholes to the inspections system.

The Saudi push comes amid increased nuclear-generated tensions in the region, fed by suspicions that Iran might want to develop the bomb. And it highlights important gaps in nuclear controls just before a high-level international nonproliferation conference is to convene next month in New York.

While the Saudi government insists it has no interest in going nuclear beyond a small research reactor built in the 1970s, in the past two decades it has been linked to prewar Iraq’s nuclear program, to Pakistan and to the Pakistani nuclear black marketeer A.Q. Khan. It has expressed interest in Pakistani missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and credible reports say Saudi officials have discussed taking the nuclear option as a deterrent in the volatile Middle East.