Brussels, 30/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - Iran has softened it stance on the offer from Russia of enriching Iran's uranium in Russia, which it will now be considering despite outright rejection in the recent past. A deputy secretary at the Russian national security council, Igor Ivanov, will be sent to Teheran to clarify areas of the Russian offer, explained AFP reports on 29 December, quoting Iranian sources.
On 24 December, the Russian foreign ministry said that the Russian offer to create a joint Russian-Iranian venture in Russia to enrich uranium was still on the table. On 25 December, a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign office, Hamid Reza Assefi, implicitly rejected the offer saying that Iran would only welcome proposals and plans recognising its right to carry out uranium enrichment in Iran, with the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, commenting in the recent fortnight that Iran would not give up one iota of its legitimate nuclear rights.
As a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Iran says it is entitled to carry out the entire nuclear combustion cycle, including enrichment. Enriched uranium can be fuel for nuclear power reactors but is also the explosive core of atom bombs, which is why the EU3 group (Germany, the UK and France) were keen to renew dialogue with Iran. The EU3 met Iranian nuclear negotiators on 21 December and will be meeting again on 18 January (in Vienna, see EUROPE 9098). They are urging Iran to accept the Russian offer (see EUROPE 9096). The EU3 believe the Russian offer is the only way of ensuring Iran does not use the enriched uranium to build bombs, and it also gets Russia involved in the nuclear talks with Iran. Ahead of the renewal of talks with Iran, an EU3 diplomat in Vienna said that the real diplomatic issue was getting Russians on board to be able to send the issue to the UN Security Council. If Iran decides to reject the Russian offer, it would be more difficult for Moscow to resist US pressure to send Iran to the Security Council.
The United States cautiously welcomed the apparent softening in Iran's position. France said it had taken note of it, and a deputy spokesman for the French foreign ministry, Denis Simonneau, said time was running out and it was now up to Iran to take the necessary decisions for a reprise of the negotiations process in line with the wishes of the international community.