The Barack Obama administration has shifted policy on planned international nuclear cooperation agreements by withdrawing a demand that Jordan and Vietnam give up their rights to produce nuclear fuel, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting senior US officials, said Obama's administration took the decision during advanced negotiations with those countries because it feared the demand would undermine US interests.
Not only could US firms lose the chance to build nuclear reactors overseas but Washington could find it harder to influence the nonproliferation policies of developing countries, according to the officials quoted by the daily.
The decision is a shift in policy from 2009 when the Obama administration signed a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it said.
Under the terms of the deal, the UAE was barred from enriching uranium domestically or reprocessing spent plutonium fuel, both of which can be used to produce atomic weapons.
Obama had cited the arrangement as the "gold standard" for future nuclear cooperation agreements.
