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Iran set to reject UN-brokered nuclear plan: leading MP
Tehran (AFP) Nov 7, 2009 Iran has decided to reject proposals from major powers for the supply of nuclear fuel, a leading member of parliament said on Saturday, in a serious setback for UN-brokered efforts to allay Western concerns about its atomic ambitions. Under the plan thrashed out in talks with France, Russia and the United States, Iran was to have shipped out most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium in return for fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. The proposals were designed to assuage fears that Iran could otherwise divert some of the stocks and enrich them further to the much higher levels of purity required to make an atomic bomb. But officials, who strongly deny any such intention, had expressed mounting concern that Iran's arch-foe Washington might welch on the deal and Tehran might ship out its uranium without receiving anything in return. "We do not want to give part of our 1,200 kilos (more than 2,640 pounds) of enriched uranium in order to receive fuel of 20 percent enrichment," said Alaeddin Borujerdi, the influential head of parliament's national security and foreign policy committee. "This option of giving our enriched uranium gradually or in one go is over now," he told the ISNA news agency. "We are studying how to procure fuel and (Ali Asghar) Soltanieh is negotiating to find a solution," he added, referring to Iran's envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog. A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday that it was "still waiting for the formal response" from Soltanieh. But a second member of the Iranian parliamentary committee also said that response would be negative. "We were not against the exchange," the ISNA news agency quoted Hossein Naghavi Hosseini as saying. "But during the negotiation, they were unable to give Iran the confidence and so the response ... is negative." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had said on Friday that Iran was considering alternatives to the exchange deal -- either further enriching the uranium on its own for the Tehran reactor or importing the fuel commercially. But Russia, which would have further processed the uranium under the UN-brokered deal, warned Tehran it risked further sanctions if it took a "less constructive position." "I do not want that all this ends up with the adopting of international sanctions because sanctions, as a rule, lead in a complex and dangerous direction," President Dmitry Medvedev said in comments released by the Kremlin. "But if there is no movement forward then no-one is going to exclude such a scenario," he said in the comments to German weekly Der Spiegel. Russia is building Iran's first nuclear power plant, in the southern city of Bushehr, and Medvedev said the country has every right to a peaceful nuclear programme. Even so, the existing rules have to be observed, without trying to hide away any objects," he said, in an apparent reference to a secret enrichment facility only recently declared. In its initial reply to the IAEA-drafted plan, Tehran took issue with provisions for it to ship out 75 percent of its stocks before receiving any fuel, Iranian media reported. A number of senior officials had argued that that stipulation would be a major concession for Iran for which it would receive little in return. "What guarantee do we have that if we deliver our enriched uranium, we will get the fuel," hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami asked on Friday. In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei acknowledged Iranian suspicions. "There's total distrust on the part of Iran," he said. But he added that Iranian demands for its low-enriched uranium to be shipped out at the same time as it received the nuclear fuel were not acceptable to Western powers. A simultaneous exchange "would not defuse the crisis, and the whole idea is to defuse the crisis," he said. The IAEA chief said compromise proposals were being explored, including the possibility of storing the Iranian uranium in a "third country, which could be a friendly country to Iran." But an Iranian official on Saturday dismissed the idea. "Iran will not send its enriched uranium to any country," ISNA quoted the official as saying. The official accused ElBaradei of publicly floating an idea that had already been rejected because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday heads to Turkey, the third country which had originally been mooted.
earlier related report Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran would give the additional details to the UN nuclear watchdog following the initial response it gave to the proposals from three major powers on October 29. "We have some more details which we have to give to the International Atomic Energy Agency," state television quoted him on its website as saying. "We have three options -- enrich the fuel ourselves, buy it directly or exchange our uranium for fuel," he said. "They (the IAEA and the major powers) have to choose from these options. Given the need of Iran to have the fuel, my view is that they will accept another round of discussions." Mottaki's suggestion of further talks came despite a warning from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday that Washington's patience at Tehran's failure to give its definitive response was beginning to wear thin. She called on Iran to accept unamended the proposals drawn up by the IAEA after talks it held with France, Russia and the United States. "As I have said, this is a pivotal moment for Iran, and we urge Iran to accept the agreement as proposed," Clinton told reporters. "We will not alter it, and we will not wait forever," she said. The proposals call for Iran to ship most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment in Russia and conversion by France into fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. They are aimed at allaying Western concerns that Iran could otherwise divert some of the reserves and enrich them further to the much higher levels of purity required to make an atomic bomb, an ambition Tehran strongly denies. Iran had been due to give its response to the proposed deal by October 23 but it gave only an initial reply last month, which Iranian media say requested changes to the pace at which it ships out the uranium. In his sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran on Friday, hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami asked what guarantee Iran had that it would get the fuel it needs if it shipped out a full 75 percent of its stocks as proposed under the plan. "What guarantee do we have that if we deliver our enriched uranium, we will get the fuel?" he asked. "If they want to harm our rights, our response will be to enrich the fuel ourselves." Khatami warned that Iran's readiness to engage in talks with the United States on its nuclear programme was not unconditional. President Barack "Obama's recent declaration that Americans do not intervene in Iranian events is a lie because the United States and its national media do interfere," he said. "Unless the Americans give up their oppressive behaviour, Iran will not have satanic negotiations." Khatami was referring to the "Great Satan" tag applied to Washington by the Islamic regime for years before the opening of direct talks on the nuclear issue earlier this year. In comments before the prayers, the head of parliament's foreign policy and national security committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, took a slightly more conciliatory line. He welcomed the fact that Western powers had made nuclear fuel proposals that, by accepting Iran's past enrichment of uranium, effectively broke with repeated ultimatums from the UN Security Council to suspend the sensitive process, which were backed up with three sets of UN sanctions. "The proposal about the exchange of uranium basically shows that they have rejected the policy of confrontation in favour of interaction with Iran," he told Iran's official IRNA news agency. But he added: "Uranium enrichment and nuclear technology are our absolute rights which cannot be taken away. "The Supreme National Security Council and the president will take a decision on this issue." Share This Article With Planet Earth
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Iran Tested New Nuke Design; Refuses To Export Enriched UraniumLondon (AFP) Nov 6, 2009 The UN nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence that it has experimented with highly advanced nuclear warhead designs, a British newspaper reported Friday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes Iranian scientists may have tested components of the sophisticated technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, the Guardian reported. This technology -- whose ... read more |
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