Tehran, May 26: Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the United States and Russia Wednesday to back a nuclear fuel deal, warning it would be the last “opportunity” to resolve the atomic standoff.
“The Tehran declaration (on a fuel swap) is the best opportunity. We took an important step and said something very important. There are no excuses left,” Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech, addressing US and Russian leaders.
The Iranian president said the deal provided an “historic opportunity” to his US counterpart Barack Obama who began his presidency with a pledge to extend an olive branch to Tehran.
Obama “should bear in mind that if he does not use this opportunity, Iranians are unlikely to give him a new chance,” he said, as world powers mulled new sanctions against Iran despite the fuel deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey earlier this month.
“There are people in the world and in America who insist on pitting Mr Obama against Iranians and push him to the point of no return and force him to do something which will forever block the path of friendship with Iranians,” he said.
The US has been dismissive of the agreement, arguing that the international community needs to keep up the pressure on Tehran.
“We hope Russian officials will pay attention, make amends and not let Iranians put them in the line of their historic enemies,” Ahmadinejad said, accusing Iran’s northern neighbour of “siding with those who have been our enemy for 30 years.”
Despite strong energy and defence ties with Iran, Russia has backed a new sanctions drive at the UN Security Council.
Iran is already under three sets of US-led UN sanctions, amid allegations that its programme is cover for a drive for a nuclear weapon.
Iran denies any such ambition insisting the programme is for power generation and medical purposes only.
On Monday, Iran formally notified the International Atomic Energy Agency of its agreement to the nuclear fuel swap deal, under which it would ship some low enriched uranium to Turkey in return for higher grade fuel for a Tehran research reactor.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Iran’s letter to the UN watchdog had “a number of deficiencies.”
“The agreement… between Iran, Brazil and Turkey only occurred because the Security Council was on the brink of publicly releasing the text of the resolution we’ve been negotiating for many weeks,” Clinton said on Tuesday.
Washington has forged a compromise on a new draft sanctions resolution at the Security Council which it says has the support of all five veto-wielding permanent members including China, a close ally and energy partner of Iran.
In a televised press conference on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki branded Clinton’s comments “faulty” and “propagandist,” insisting the “Tehran accord will benefit all sides.”
The IAEA has yet to comment on the deal but specialists have said the accord has a key technical flaw as it fails to allocate enough time to make the fuel.
According to a text of the joint declaration carried by Tehran media, Iran expects to receive the 20-percent enriched uranium for reactor fuel within a year of depositing its low-enriched uranium in Turkey.
Israel, the only country in the Middle East that posses nuclear bombs, has accused Tehran of “trickery” in the nuclear deal.
—Agencies