Top Iran officials question UN-brokered nuclear deal

Top Iranian figures yesterday criticised a UN-brokered deal to produce nuclear fuel for Tehran from its own partly enriched uranium, apparently challenging what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself has proposed.

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said Western powers are trying to "cheat" Iran through the deal, under which Tehran would export low-enriched uranium (LEU) to be further enriched and converted into nuclear fuel for a reactor in Tehran.

"They are saying we will give you the 20 per cent (enriched uranium) fuel for the Tehran reactor only if you give us your enriched uranium. I see no link between these two things," Larijani told ISNA news agency.

But that is essentially what Ahmadinejad himself proposed on September 30.

"We need 19.75 per cent-enriched uranium. We said that, and we propose to buy it from anybody who is ready to sell it to us. We are ready to give 3.5 percent-enriched uranium and then they can enrich it more and deliver to us 19.75 percent-enriched uranium," the president said.

Ahmadinejad was speaking just ahead of an October 1 meeting in Geneva at which the proposal was apparently discussed, and which drew a positive reaction from Russia and France. The full details of deal eventually hammered out have not been released, but France has said it calls on Iran to hand over to Russia by the end of the year 1,200 kilogrammes of LEU it has at a plant in Natanz.

Russia would enrich the material to the 19.75 percent level needed for use in a research reactor in Tehran that makes radio-isotopes for medical use.

Diplomats say Russia would sub-contract to France the process of turning the enriched uranium into the fuel rods for the reactor.

But ISNA said Larijani, Iran's former nuclear negotiator, termed the deal as illegal and illogical.

"The important thing in this nuclear issue is that Westerners should not cheat. We have a nuclear reactor in Tehran and according to the IAEA rules, they have to supply the fuel for it," Larijani said.