Iran agrees a deal to send uranium abroad for enrichment

May 17, 2010 - 14:40 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran has agreed a deal to send uranium abroad for enrichment after mediation talks with Turkish and Brazilian leaders, BBC reports.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said it was ready to ship 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium to Turkey, in return for nuclear fuel for a research reactor.

The plan could revive a UN-backed proposal and may ward off another round of sanctions.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling on world leaders for new talks. He said it was time for talks "with Iran based on honesty, justice and mutual respect".

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were at the talks in Tehran.

"Turkey will be the place to keep Iran's 3.5% [low-enriched] uranium," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news briefing after the deal was signed.

He said that 1,200kg would be exchanged and that Iran would notify the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, "within a week".

Iran's nuclear program

Iran's leaders have worked to pursue nuclear energy technology since the 1950s, spurred by the launch of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. It made steady progress, with Western help, through the early 1970s. But concern over Iranian intentions followed by the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 effectively ended outside assistance. Iran was known to be reviving its civilian nuclear programs during the 1990s, but revelations in 2002 and 2003 of clandestine research into fuel enrichment and conversion raised international concern that Iran's ambitions had metastasized beyond peaceful intent. Although Iran has consistently denied allegations it seeks to develop a bomb, the September 2009 revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom -constructed under the radar of international inspectors - deepened suspicion surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions.