TEHRAN: Iran’s envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog agency will present Tehran’s position on a draft nuclear fuel deal in Vienna on Thursday, a semi-official Iranian news agency reported on Wednesday.
Mehr News Agency said Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh would personally give Iran’s response to Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on the proposal for Iran to send most of its enriched uranium abroad.
Echoing a report by Iranian state television on Tuesday, Mehr said Iran would accept the framework of the agreement but also propose changes, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions.
The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, did not directly confirm the Mehr report but said Soltanieh left Tehran for Vienna early on Wednesday. “He will meet with El-Baradei at the first appropriate opportunity and present what he received in Tehran,” Salehi said.
Under the draft deal hammered out by El-Baradei earlier this month after talks in Vienna with Iran, the United States, France and Russia, Iran would send low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for further processing and eventual use in a research reactor.
The draft pact calls for Iran to transfer about 75 percent of its known 1.5 tons of LEU to Russia for further enrichment by the end of this year, then to France for conversion into fuel plates. These would be returned to Tehran to power a research reactor that produces radio-isotopes for cancer treatment.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief said on Tuesday there was no need to rework the UN draft and he and France’s foreign minister suggested Tehran would rekindle demands for tougher international sanctions if it tried to undo the plan. But the Kremlin said on Wednesday sanctions against Iran were highly unlikely in the near future, Interfax news agency reported. “Sanctions in relation to Iran are hardly possible in the near future,” Kremlin foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko said.
Senior Iranian MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi said UN experts who arrived in Iran early on Sunday to inspect the new enrichment site about 160 km south of Tehran had left the country, ISNA reported.
