Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was ready to send its enriched uranium abroad in exchange for nuclear fuel, as Washington said it was prepared to listen if Iran was making a new offer to break an impasse over its disputed nuclear programme.
The president appeared for the first time to drop long-standing conditions Tehran had set for accepting a UN-brokered proposal that the West hopes will stop enriched uranium being used to build atomic bombs in Iran.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has brokered the proposed plan under which Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, would send its low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for more highly enriched fuel for a medical research reactor.
"We have no problem sending our enriched uranium abroad," Mr Ahmadinejad told state television. "We say: we will give you our 3.5 per cent enriched uranium and will get the fuel. It may take four to five months until we get the fuel.
"If we send our enriched uranium abroad and then they do not give us the 20 per cent enriched fuel for our reactor, we are capable of producing it inside Iran," he said.
Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the uranium could be exchanged in Turkey, Brazil or Japan if agreement is reached.
Iran has faced intense Western pressure, under threat of new sanctions, to implement the plan and Mr Ahmadinejad's words came with both conciliatory international gestures and uncompromising moves to crack down on opposition protesters at home.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said today Moscow would welcome Iranian acceptance of the UN offer. "If Iran was to return to the scheme that was proposed in October, then we would welcome that," he said.
Under the proposed deal Tehran would transfer 70 per cent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for conversion into special fuel rods to keep the nuclear medicine reactor running.
The plan aims to reduce Iran's reserves below the quantity needed for the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, if the material were refined to a high degree of purity.
Reuters