THE HEAD of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said last night that international talks on Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium were “off to a good start”.
Despite fears that negotiations could collapse after Tehran gave conflicting signals, delegates from Iran, the US, Russia and France talked for 2½ hours and agreed to meet again this morning.
“We’re off to a good start. We have had a constructive meeting. Most technical issues have been discussed,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the host of the talks, said yesterday.
If the talks succeed, most of Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) would be sent to France and Russia for processing so that it could be used in a Tehran research reactor for making medical isotopes.
That would represent the most concrete progress in efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis for almost four years, and would temporarily defuse concerns that the uranium could be used to make a warhead.
However, western officials cautioned that there were still many issues to be resolved, about timing and the quantity of uranium involved, as well as guarantees about its handling. Even if a deal was struck, the officials said, it would not represent a lasting solution as long as Iran continued to enrich more uranium.
Iranian officials were quoted on state-run television as saying they were only interested in buying reactor fuel abroad, not in using Iran’s reserves, and there were reports too that Iran would refuse to deal with the French directly, because of past business disagreements. However, reports from inside the negotiating chamber said there was no hint of a boycott.
A report on Iranian radio also suggested that Tehran accepted the principle of exchanging its LEU for more highly enriched reactor fuel from abroad. But the report quoted Iranian officials as saying that if the talks collapsed, Iran would enrich its own reactor fuel. – (Guardian service)