Turkey plays constructive role in nuke talks, says Ahmadinejad

Turkey is trying to play a sincere and constructive role in breaking Iran’s nuclear impasse with Western nations, the Islamic Republic’s president said Monday.

“Cooperation with Iran is in the West's interests,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

A deadlock in talks would only hurt the West by making Tehran push harder to advance its technology, Ahmadinejad said during a reception for journalists who attended the annual meeting of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies, or OANA, in Tehran.

The hard-line Iranian president’s comments came as the Ankara government said it is awaiting a response from Tehran on an offer to store Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

U.S. President Barack Obama said recently that Iran is running out of time to agree on a U.N.-brokered plan.

Stressing that Turkey was actively involved in recent diplomatic efforts to solve the problem, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Sunday that he and Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, had agreed to a formula on how to proceed in trying to convince Iran to accept the proposal.

Last week, Turkey’s energy minister said that his country would not refuse if asked to store Iran’s enriched uranium.

However, Davutoğlu said, the proposal faces opposition in the Islamic Republic. “The Iranians trust us, but there is great opposition within Iran,” he said. “They tell us: Turkey is not the problem; the uranium being taken abroad is.”

In Parliament, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said Monday that Iran’s uranium could be stored in Küçükçekmece, which he said has a large storage capacity. “That would have no risks,” Yıldız said. “The product would be stored; therefore, it would have no radioactive effect.”

“What’s important is the parties concerned asking for our help,” the minister said. “We say we are open for this, both politically and technically.”

In Tehran, Ahmadinejad again reiterated that Iran’s nuclear rights are non-negotiable and that the country’s nuclear activities would only continue within the framework of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

The Web statement did not elaborate on how Western pressure would embolden Iran. This, however, is seen as a likely reference to enriching uranium to a higher level of 20 percent, needed to power a research reactor in Tehran that is part of the negotiations with the IAEA in Vienna.

Iran is currently enriching uranium to less than 5 percent, which is sufficient to produce fuel for its future nuclear-power plant, but has also raised fears in the West of covert further enrichment by Tehran in a secret pursuit of nuclear arms.

Iran maintains that its nuclear program is aimed only at peaceful purposes such as energy production.

A plan brokered by the United Nations in October would require Tehran to ship its enriched uranium out of the country for further processing. Under the deal, Tehran would ship 1,100 kilograms of low-enriched uranium – around 70 percent of its stockpile – to Russia in one batch by the end of the year for further enrichment. The move would ease international concerns that the material could be processed for a bomb.

Though the arrangement is not a guarantee that Iran could not develop a bomb if it chose to, it is anticipated that it would delay the likelihood of that breakthrough. The deal would be the most tangible payoff for Obama’s program of careful outreach to Iran this year, a diplomatic overture dimmed by political violence and alleged vote-rigging in Iran’s elections in June.

According to the U.N. plan, after further enrichment in Russia, France would convert the uranium into fuel rods that would be returned to Iran for use in a reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes. Fuel rods cannot be further enriched into weapons-grade material.

In the past, Teheran had indicated it might agree to send only “part” of its stockpile abroad, but it has not officially responded to the agency about the plan. Later Monday, an adviser to Ahmadinejad warned that Iran could not fully trust the West, especially France, citing past nuclear controversies with Paris.

Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran says, it made a deal with France for a 10 percent stake in a nuclear plant and was expected to receive 50 tons of UF-6 gas, which can be turned into enriched uranium. Iran claims it never later received the gas.

According to the official IRNA news agency, former Iranian Vice President Parviz Davoodi said that even if nuclear talks now succeed, Tehran should be the one to first receive nuclear fuel before sending its own uranium out for further enrichment.