The Latest Nuclear Fuel Swap Proposal Was Aimed At Breaking The Impasse
Tehran, Dec. 15, 09 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki urged the countries involved in nuclear negotiations with Iran to convey their official response with respect to the latest nuclear proposal by Iran.
‘We have not received any official response and (we) do not insist that the other side respond to the proposal.’ Mottaki said in a joint press conference with Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov in Tehran on Monday.
’We just wanted to open a way for the other side,’ Mottaki added. In response to US President’s remarks rejecting the latest nuclear fuel swap proposal by Iran, Mr. Mottaki said the proposal was intended to show Iran’s goodwill and transparency in order to resolve the impasse created by the group of 5+1 after initial talks on October 1st in Geneva.
After the negotiations, the group of 5+1 insisted on a fixed and inflexible nuclear swap proposal in which Tehran must send most of its low enriched uranium to a third country for an unknown period of time in return for higher enriched uranium to be used for its small research reactor in Tehran.
Iran rejected such proposal saying there would be no exchange of fuel outside the Iranian territory and instead proposed a step-by-step nuclear fuel swap procedure to take place on its own territory on Kish Island located in the Persian Gulf. The US government retained its inflexible position when President Barack Hussein Obama rejected the proposal and further threatened Iran with severest of sanctions.
Iranian Foreign Minister in turn made recommendations to Western powers to refrain from using the language of threat when said, ‘I have already responded to the half-baked remarks by some U.S. and British officials before. Today it is not possible to frighten countries through threats or sanctions, and the language of sanctions goes back to the 1960s.’
In another development yesterday Iranian nuclear official, Ali Akbar Salehi, director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), told MNA that from now on Iran will inform the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) only six months prior to any of its nuclear related projects should begin operation, which is the legal commitment for all the members of the agency.
Earlier during a debate in the parliament the government was obliged to limit cooperation with the IAEA only within its legal commitments to the agency.
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