PRESIDENT MAHMOUD Ahmadinejad said yesterday that Iran was ready to send its enriched uranium abroad in exchange for nuclear fuel under a plan the West hopes will stop the material being used for atomic bombs.
The president appeared for the first time to drop long-standing conditions Tehran had set, and the United States said if Iran was serious about a deal it should tell the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA has brokered a proposed deal under which Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, would send its low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for more highly enriched fuel for a medical research reactor.
“We have no problem sending our enriched uranium abroad,” Mr Ahmadinejad told state television.
“We say: we will give you our 3.5 per cent enriched uranium and will get the fuel. It may take four to five months until we get the fuel.
“If we send our enriched uranium abroad and then they do not give us the 20 per cent enriched fuel for our reactor, we are capable of producing it inside Iran,” he said.
Iran has faced intense Western pressure, under threat of new sanctions, to agree a nuclear deal and Mr Ahmadinejad’s words came with both conciliatory international gestures and uncompromising moves to crack down on opposition protesters at home.
The president offered to swap three detained US citizens charged with spying for Iranians jailed in the United States. At the same time, Iran said it would hang nine more rioters over unrest following a disputed presidential vote last June.
US vice-president Joe Biden said Iran’s leaders were “sowing the seeds of their own destruction” through their harsh crackdown on anti-government unrest.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s statement on the nuclear issue - on which supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last word – was apparently the first time a top official had accepted exchanging low-enriched uranium for nuclear medicine fuel off Iranian soil.
Iran’s foreign minister and the IAEA said last week a deal on uranium enrichment was still possible, despite Western diplomats saying Tehran had in effect turned down the proposal.