Iran ready to cooperate with UN on n-deal: Ahmadinejad

The plan,hammered out in talks in Vienna last week,is designed to bridge the gap between Iran’s insistence that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes and the West’s suspicion that it is building a bomb.

The proposal provides for Iran to ship 2,645 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia for further processing. That amount,representing most of the country’s known stockpile of low-enriched uranium,would take about a year to replace.

The uranium would be returned to Iran in the form of fuel rods,usable only in a civilian nuclear facility and not for weapons.

A crucial question is whether Iran will demand alterations to the plan or will insist on shipping the material in installments,which would undercut the intent of the deal: to leave Iran without enough nuclear material to build a weapon as the West works toward an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In his comments from Mashad,broadcast on state television,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not address the possibility that Iran might insist on gradual shipments or seek changes to the agreement. His remarks seemed to extend Iran’s two-track public position on the nuclear dispute,offering a degree of compliance with one hand while insisting on the other that there were limits to its readiness for cooperation.

“Fortunately,the conditions for international nuclear cooperation have been met,” Ahmadinejad said. “We are currently moving in the right direction and we have no fear of legal cooperation,under which all of Iran’s national rights will be preserved,and we will continue our work.”

He also insisted,as he often has,that Iran would not retreat from its rights to nuclear power. “As long as this government is in power,it will not retreat one iota on the undeniable rights of the Iranian nation.”

The pro-government newspaper Javan said on Thursday that Tehran would insist on the gradual transfer of low-enriched uranium rather than a single shipment,and the “simultaneous exchange” of fuel for a research reactor in Tehran.

The Iranian Students News Agency quoted Iran’s representative to the IAEA,Ali Asghar Soltanieh,as saying Tehran held a “positive view” of the Vienna talks. But he also hinted that Iran wanted to broaden the debate to cover the supply of nuclear fuel for the research reactor.

A team from the IAEA returned to the agency’s headquarters in Vienna on Thursday after inspecting a second nuclear enrichment plant at Fordo near Qom,the state-run Press TV reported on its website.