West duping Iran over nuclear deal: Tehran

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian Parliament speaker Ali Larijani lashed out at the West on Saturday for trying to dupe Iran with a proposed nuclear fuel deal, just a day after the Foreign Minister said that agreement was close.
“They (Western powers) say that you (Iran) must provide fuel for the Tehran reactor the way we say and, if you don’t do this, we will punish you,” the Mehr news agency quoted Larijani as saying.
“But they know this is a political swindle and that they are trying to ensure Iran’s enriched uranium” is removed from the Islamic republic.
Larijani and other Iranian officials have repeatedly criticised the proposed deal since it was first discussed in Vienna in October with France, Russia and the United States.
Drafted by the UN nuclear watchdog, the deal envisages Iran sending most of its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad before receiving fuel for the Tehran reactor from France and Russia.
Iranian officials have expressed concern that Western governments might welch on the deal and have called for the LEU stocks to be shipped abroad in phases as Iran receives the fuel.
The comments from Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator, marked a sharp hardening of tone from remarks in Germany by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki just the previous day.
“With regard to discussions with the different parties, I personally believe that we have created conducive ground for such an exchange in the not very distant future,” Mottaki told the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
On Saturday, Mottaki said he held “very good” talks with the UN atomic watchdog head over a possible breakthrough deal on nuclear fuel that has been met with Western scepticism.
“Today, I had a very good meeting with the head of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Yukiya Amano,” on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference here, southern Germany, Mottaki said. He was tight-lipped however on what exactly was discussed, but reiterated comments from late Friday that Iran was serious about striking a deal and that he believed an agreement was possible “in the near future.”