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Iran will never give up its right to uranium enrichment

Posted on: Sat July 31, 2010

TEHRAN: Iran will never give up its right to enrich uranium, a senior official said on Friday, but it could suspend higher-level work for several years if along-delayed fuel swap can be agreed with foreign powers.

Iran s position on the process may be central to reviving stalled talks with global powers which have imposed tighter sanctions on the Islamic Republic, fearing that it is trying to make an atomic bomb.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday that Iran would stop enriching uranium to 20 per cent purity if the fuel swap is agreed. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran s Atomic Energy Organisation, said it was out of the question for Iran to promise never to enrich uranium, but added that the higher-grade work could be put on hold. Iran has thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium to the3.5 per cent level it says it needs for generating power. It began refining small amounts to the 20 per cent level in February, alarming Western powers because this takes the material closer to the grade needed for a nuclear weapon.

 Twenty-per cent enrichment is our right and we would never cede this right. But despite that right, since its need is not felt (in the event of a fuel swap), there is no necessity fordoing that, Salehi told the semi-official Mehr news agency.

The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran cease all uranium enrichment. Iran has held no substantive talks with world powers since it struck a fuel swap deal with Russia, France and the United States in October. That unravelled when Tehran sought further conditions. Under the deal Iran would have sent 1.2 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (LEU) about 70 per cent of its stockpile at the time abroad in exchange for specially processed fuel rods needed to keep a Tehran medical research reactor running.  

The plan was revived in talks with Brazil and Turkey in May, but by then Iran s LEU reserve had doubled. This devalued the swap in Western eyes as it would no longer remove enough LEU to prevent its use for an atom bomb, if refined to high purity.

Meanwhile, Israel is skeptical that a new round of sanctions targeting Iran s nuclear programme will be effective, but there is still time for them to work, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.    

 They re determined to get nuclear military capability. We see it, he said on MSNBC s Morning Joe television programme. I don t believe that sanctions will work.     

But he said that despite skepticism, Israel was willing to give the latest round of United Nations pressure on Tehran more time to have an effect.     I think that the essence of it we still believe it s still time for sanctions, to see whether they re working. But as I said, we have to realise, we cannot wink in front of tough realities, however tough they might be.     

The Security Council slapped a fourth set of sanctions on Iran in June over Tehran s refusal to halt its uranium enrichment work, the most sensitive part of the country s controversial nuclear program, which many nations fear masks a drive for nuclear weapons.

Courtesy : The News