Iran rejects sending uranium abroad, considers swaps

Iranian pledges in Geneva talks with six powers on October 1 won Tehran a reprieve from sanctions targeting its oil sector, but Western nations stressed they would not wait indefinitely for it to follow through.

Iran had previously indicated that it may agree to send only "part" of its stockpile in several shipments.

Should the talks fail to help Iran obtain the fuel from abroad, Iran has threatened to enrich uranium from the 5 percent level up to the 20 percent threshold needed for the reactor fuel. For bombs, uranium needs to be refined to 90 percent.

Enrichment above 5 percent would ring Western alarm bells since Iran is not known to have the technology for converting the material into fuel plates for the medical reactor. Only France and Argentina have that know-how, Western officials say.

If 70 percent of Iran's uranium is exported in one shipment, or at the most two shipments in quick succession, Tehran would need about a year to produce enough uranium to again have the stockpile it would need for a weapon.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has been seeking compromises to rescue the deal, including Iran parking its LEU in a third country, pending delivery of reactor fuel. Turkey says it would be willing to store Iran's enriched uranium.

Mottaki did not say what would happen to the low-enriched fuel it was prepared to swap, but authorities have said in the past that it could be stockpiled in Iran under IAEA supervision.

Asked about Mottaki's remarks, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh said Tehran wanted a guarantee that it would receive fuel it contracted for.

He recalled that Tehran once paid the United States and France to provide nuclear fuel but it was never delivered because of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"We never got the fuel or our money back. So a guarantee is now the pivotal issue for us. More than 200 hospitals in Iran depend on this reactor," Soltanieh told reporters after an informal meeting of IAEA governors in Vienna.