Moscow, February 04: Russia wednesday welcomed Iran’s decision to send uranium to third countries for enrichment and processing nuclear fuel for its reactors as proposed by the UN nuclear watchdog.
“If Iran is ready to return to the earlier agreed-on plan, we will only welcome this,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov today said.
He was commenting on the unexpected move of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who dropped his opposition to sending uranium abroad for enrichment.
“Some people made a fuss about it. But there is no problem. We will seal a contract and we will give you 3.5 per cent uranium to enrich it to 20 per cent in four or five months and return it to us,” Ahmadinejad said in an interview aired on state TV.
Ahmadinejad dismissed concerns that the uranium would not be returned.
In such a case, Iran would continue to independently enrich uranium.
Under a plan drawn up in October at IAEA talks in Vienna between Iran, the UN, the US, Russia and France, the Islamic Republic was supposed to ship out its low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched and then sent to France to prepare it for use in Iranian research reactor.
However, Iran subsequently refused to send its stockpile to France and Russia, and the US proposed allowing Tehran to send its uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey.
Under the new plan, Iran would ship 900 kg out of the total of 1200 kg to Turkey for further enrichment, after which it would be sent to France for processing into fuel for Iranian power plants, and returned to Iran via Turkey, RIA Novosti reported.
However, Tehran rejected the proposal and suggested it could consider a simultaneous swap of its low-enriched uranium for 20 percent enriched uranium, but that the exchange would have to take place on its own territory.
—Agencies