Tehran, January 30: Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said “new ideas” on the supply of nuclear fuel to Iran were raised in talks with French and Brazilian officials in Davos, reports said on Saturday.
Mottaki also said that Tehran’s own ideas on the exchange of its low-enriched uranium for higher-enriched fuel remain on the table, Iranian media reported from the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort.
“Following discussions with French and Brazilian officials, new ideas with regard to supplying fuel for the Tehran (research) reactor have been raised,” the ISNA news agency quoted the foreign minister as saying.
Talks between Iran and world powers on a UN-brokered deal for the supply of fuel for the reactor have been deadlocked over Western objections to Iranian calls for amendments.
The original draft calls for Iran to ship out most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium before any deliveries of nuclear fuel to assuage Western concerns it might otherwise covertly further enrich the uranium to weapons grade.
But Iran has said it will only ship out the uranium in phases as it receives the fuel from France and Russia, and Mottaki said that idea remained on the table.
“We hope that the other side (the Western powers) will be realistic, so that a clear result can be achieved,” he said.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Yukio Amano, was also in Davos on Friday and said that negotiations were not over on the proposed fuel deal.
“Dialogue is continuing,” Amano told reporters, a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Western powers were moving toward tougher action against Iran.
-Agencies