Tehran, April 27: Iran on Tuesday said “new mechanisms” could settle the dispute over the Islamic state’s controversial nuclear programmes.
“New mechanisms could indeed create confidence on all relevant sides to settle the issue,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the Khabar news network after his return from a European trip.
He did not elaborate what the “new mechanisms” might be.
Mottaki visited Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina – both temporary members of the United Nations Security Council – in an effort to persuade them not to vote in favour of renewed sanctions against Iran.
In Vienna he also met with the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, and discussed the plan brokered in October by the IAEA under which Iran’s low-enriched uranium (LEU) was to be exported to Russia for further enrichment and then to France for processing into fuel for a Tehran medical reactor.
The IAEA plan was not implemented as Iran insisted on the LEU-fuel swap to take place on Iranian soil but the IAEA and world powers rejected that condition.
“My personal opinion is that there is a more serious willingness to follow up the uranium exchange case and I am confident that the deal could still be realized if there was genuine political will,” Mottaki said.
The Iranian chief diplomat described his trip to Vienna and Sarajevo as successful, saying constructive talks were held in the two capitals.
Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina have, however, indicated that they would support sanctions against Iran. The talks with Amano have also reportedly not led to any major breakthrough.
Mottaki has conveyed to Amano “new ideas” related to the fuel-exchange plan that could still realize the deal but has not disclosed further details.
As a first sign of softening its stance, Iran has allowed the IAEA to inspect its new enrichment site in Natanz in central Iran where Iran is enriching uranium to 20 per cent since February.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was last week in Uganda, another current Security Council member, where he sought the African country’s vote against possible sanctions.
Ahmadinejad on Monday once again criticized the privileges of world powers in the UN and said the world neither needed the Security Council nor the veto right of its permanent members as these privileges were solely used for suppressing nations and were “satanic tools.”
Iran insists that all its nuclear projects are solely for civil and peaceful purposes and has rejected accusations by world powers that it is working on a secret military programme and possible nuclear weapons’ research.
–Agencies