Head of IAEA suggests Turkey as solution to nuclear impasse with Iran

Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei suggested Saturday that Iran’s enriched uranium could be shipped to Turkey as a means of easing U.S. and European concerns over the Persian Gulf country’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran decided to turn down proposals from the major powers for the supply of nuclear fuel, a leading member of parliament said on Saturday, in a serious setback for UN-brokered efforts to allay Western concerns about its ambitions. Under the plan Iran was to have shipped out most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium in return for fuel for a research reactor in Tehran.

According to Bloomberg, ElBaradei proposed Turkey as a third-country destination after Iran didn’t agree to a Western suggestion that its enriched uranium be sent to Russia for further enrichment to reactor-grade fuel.

“It should work,” ElBaradei said in an interview Saturday on Public Broadcasting TV, as reported by Bloomberg. “Iran has a lot of trust in Turkey.” The Obama administration would agree to this proposal because the United States is “very comfortable with Turkey,” he said.

ElBaradei said that, while he hasn’t presented the idea to the Turkish government, he is confident that Turkish officials would be receptive to holding the material in IAEA custody. Iran would then get fuel for its research reactor in Tehran from Russia. Iran is considering the proposal, he said.

The Turkish ambassador to the UN, Ertuğrul Apakan, said he is unaware of the plan, when asked Saturday.

In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, director-general of the Vienna-based spoke of the difficulties of brokering a deal amid the legacy of suspicion between Tehran and Washington, which have had no diplomatic relations since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"There's total distrust on the part of Iran," ElBaradei said.

Iranian officials had expressed mounting concern that Iran's arch-foe Washington might duck out of the deal and Tehran might ship out its uranium without receiving anything in return.

"We do not want to give part of our 1,200 kilos of enriched uranium in order to receive fuel of 20 percent enrichment," said Alaeddin Borujerdi, the influential head of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee.

"This option of giving our enriched uranium gradually or in one go is over now," he told the ISNA news agency, according to Agence France-Presse.

Iran's ISNA news agency quoted Hossein Naghavi Hosseini as saying, "We were not against the exchange, but during the negotiation, they were unable to give Iran confidence and so the response of the Islamic Republic of Iran is negative.”

Russia, which would have further processed the Iranian uranium under the proposed deal with the powers, warned the Tehran authorities that they risked further UN sanctions if they took a "less constructive position."

"I do not want that all this ends up with the adopting of international sanctions because sanctions, as a rule, lead in a complex and dangerous direction," President Dmitry Medvedev said in comments released by the Kremlin on Saturday.

In its initial reply to the IAEA-drafted plan handed over on October 29, Tehran had taken issue with provisions for it to ship out 75 percent of its stocks before receiving any fuel, Iranian media reported.

A number of senior officials had argued that that stipulation was a major concession for Iran for which it was receiving little in return.