Monday, February 15, 2010

US, Russia and France Deny Iran’s Claim of New Enrichment Proposals

Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said on Monday in Tehran that AEOI has received new proposals from the United States, Russia and France on a nuclear fuel swap.

"After Iran's decision to domestically produce 20-percent-enriched uranium, we received some proposals from Russia, America and France," Salehi said. "We are currently studying them along with other proposals from different countries" [ILNA, 15 February].

But hours after Salehi’s announcement, the White House as well as the Russian and French governments denied they had sent Iran new proposals. Salehi’s claim adds to an already confused picture of an Iranian leadership in disarray over the country’s uranium enrichment policies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Confused? Not even close to the US healthcare reform debate, or even US-Russia START talks.

Disarray? The conditions of a proposed fuel swap have not been acceptable- and they are being prevented from buying the fuel on the open market- so they are enriching to 20% to meet their own needs to fuel TRR. What could be more straightforward than that?

b said...

I wonder about that "confused" too.

To me it seems the "west" is acting quite confused. It doesn't want Iran to enrich, but it offers nothing that anyone could accept as fair as a return.

Anonymous said...

According to the IAEA, Iran has taken only 10kg of LEU for further enrichment to 20%.

Here is the source: http://en.rian.ru/world/20100211/157851727.html