Washington, October 31: The US has warned that Iran does not have unlimited time to accept a draft agreement on shipment of enriched uranium, proposed by the UN nuclear watchdog.
“The president’s time is not unlimited, this was not about talking for the sake of talking,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Friday.
“This was about reaching an agreement that just a few weeks ago seemed to be something that the Iranians wanted,” he added.
The remarks come only a day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Tehran was ready for cooperation with other countries on its enrichment plans, but warned that Western powers must to live up to their obligations.
Earlier on Friday, the French foreign ministry also demanded that Iran make a formal response to the proposed UN-brokered agreement, which would require Iran to ship out 80 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) in exchange for highly-enriched uranium converted into metal fuel rods for the Tehran research reactor.
“We call on Iran to give its formal response without delay. The oral Iranian response to the IAEA proposes changes to the agreement,” spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters.
On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had received an ‘initial response’ from Iran to the deal.
State-run news agency IRNA, however, quoted an informed official as saying that Tehran’s message to the IAEA was not the ‘formal answer’ to the UN-backed plan.
Tehran is against shipping all its low-enriched uranium in one go, and wants instead to ship out the LEU in small, staggered portions and receive the high-level uranium needed for the Tehran Research Reactor at the same time.
—–Agencies