Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has unexpectedly dropped his opposition to sending uranium abroad for enrichment in a move aimed at defusing Tehran's stand-off with the West over its nuclear program.
"Some people made a fuss about it. But there is no problem. We will seal a contract and we will give you 3.5% uranium to enrich it to 20% in four or five months and return it to us," Ahmadinejad said in an interview aired on state TV.
Iran, which is already under three sets of UN sanctions for refusing to halt uranium enrichment, insists it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity, while Western powers suspect it of pursuing an atomic weapons program.
An international plan intended to resolve the nuclear deadlock stipulates that Iran ships its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for further enrichment and processing into fuel for power plants. Iran would not thereby be able to enrich uranium to make weapons.
Tehran had long disagreed, suggesting it could consider a simultaneous swap of its nuclear fuel for other uranium, but that the exchange would have to take place on its own territory.
Ahmadinejad dismissed concerns that the uranium would not be returned. In such a case, Iran would continue enriching uranium by itself, he said.
"If they don't return it, what will happen? We will be proven right, and then it will be proven that the agency [International Atomic Energy Agency] was not reliable and they will be discredited. Then we will be free to rely on ourselves for our activities," the Iranian leader said.
The United States and Israel have refused to rule out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute over Tehran's nuclear program.
In a further rise in tensions, Iran hit out on Tuesday at U.S. plans to boost Gulf defenses.
Parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani called the move to deploy ships with missile-targeting abilities off Iran's coast and anti-missile systems in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates "a new political trick to pave the way for its presence at others' expense."
MOSCOW, February 3 (RIA Novosti)
