Iran to enrich uranium even if fuel supply guaranteed

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran will continue with uranium enrichment, the focus of international fears about its nuclear programme, even if the country is promised supplies of nuclear reactor fuel, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Sunday.

Iran's "unchangeable policy is to be self-sufficient in fuel production for (nuclear) plants," Mottaki told reporters. "We are determined to continue peaceful nuclear work until reaching full self-sufficiency."

The minister was asked whether the Islamic republic would suspend uranium enrichment if it received international guarantees of a fuel supply.

Mottaki said Iran cannot rely on assurances by world powers and most notably the United States, which have not delivered on their nuclear contracts with Iran made before the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran has been slapped with three sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of an atom bomb.

Six major powers - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - have put forward the possibility of a package of technological, economic and political incentives if it suspends uranium enrichment.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted as saying in Brussels last Thursday that Iran might end its uranium enrichment programme if there was a "legally-binding instrument for assurance of supply."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is still considering setting up a diplomatic mission in Iran to improve contacts between the Iranian and American peoples, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

Rice poured cold water on a news report that the administration had decided to hand the issue to its successor to avoid sending a negative signal while Iran pursued sensitive nuclear work in defiance of the international community.

"We continue to look at the idea," Rice told reporters who asked about a report that plans for opening a US interests section in Iran had been shelved.

"I think it's an interesting idea, but we're going to take a look at it in the light of what it can do for our relationship with the Iranian people," she said on a flight from India to Kazakhstan for talks on separate matters.

When asked again if there is still a chance such an interests section could be set up before President George W Bush leaves office in January, Rice replied: "We're still looking at the idea."

Similarly, Rice reminded journalists in July that the presence of the US interests section in Cuba did not indicate a thaw in relations between the United States and the communist island nation.

"We are always looking for ways to relate to the Iranian people to make it easier for them to relate to us, but we're still having that set of discussions," Rice told reporters at the time.