WarSclerotic

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Iran refuses to send uranium abroad.

Iran has ruled out sending its enriched uranium abroad for further processing, saying it would prefer to purchase the required fuel from other countries and keep its low-enriched uranium.

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, told the ISNA news agency on Wednesday that a UN-backed proposal, which would have seen Tehran’s stocks of low-enriched uranium sent out of the country for further enrichment, was not feasible.

“We reviewed it … from an economic and technical aspect. We will definitely not send out our 3.5 per cent enriched uranium,” Mottaki said.

Iran was supposed to export the low-grade enriched uranium to Russia and France where it could be enriched to be used as fuel in Tehran’s medical-purpose reactor.

However, Mottaki said that Tehran could still be prepared to directly exchange the low-enriched uranium for processed nuclear fuel, providing the swap took place on Iranian soil.

“It means that we will [instead] consider swapping the [nuclear] fuel simultaneously in Iran,” he said.

‘No amendments’

The deal was seen internationally as a confidence-building measure for Iran, which wants to prove to the world that its nuclear programme is not intended for making weapons.

France said that the Iranian remarks were “extremely negative”, but pledged to continue negotiations.

“There is a clear and negative response from the Iranians,” Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said.

The deal had been negotiated between Iran and the five permanent United Nations Security Council members, plus Germany.

The West believes the plan would leave the Islamic republic without sufficient material to make a nuclear weapon, at least from stockpiles known to the international community.

Mottaki also said the Islamic republic was ready for another round of talks with world powers over securing fuel for its Tehran research reactor. The first meeting was held in Vienna on October 19.

“We have called for another meeting of the technical people who were part of Vienna talks and we will explain our considerations. But so far such meeting has not convened,” Mottaki said.

The United States rejected earlier Iranian calls for amendments and further talks on the deal and Barack Obama, the US president, said that time was running out for diplomacy to resolve the issue.

This entry was posted on November 18, 2009 at 4:12 PM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.