Iran to give IAEA more details on N-fuel plan

TEHRAN/VIENNA (AFP) - Iran said on Friday it is preparing to give more details on its response to international proposals for supplying nuclear fuel and expects more negotiations, even as Washington warned the time for talking is over.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran would give the additional details to the UN nuclear watchdog following the initial response it gave to the proposals from three major powers on October 29.
We have some more details which we have to give to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), state television quoted him on its website as saying.
We have three options - enrich the fuel ourselves, buy it directly or exchange our uranium for fuel, he said.
They (the IAEA and the major powers) have to choose from these options. Given the nee another round of discussions.
In his Juma sermon on Friday, cleric Ahmad Khatami asked what guarantee Iran had that it would get the fuel it needs if it shipped out a full 75 per cent of its stocks as proposed under the plan.
What guarantee do we have that if we deliver our enriched uranium, we will get the fuel? he asked.
If they want to harm our rights, our response will be to enrich the fuel ourselves.
Khatami warned that Irans readiness to engage in talks with the US on its nuclear programme was not unconditional.
US President Barack Obamas recent declaration that Americans do not intervene in Iranian events is a lie because the United States and its national media do interfere, he said.
In Vienna, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said UN experts found nothing to be worried about during their first inspection of a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran,
In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, Baradei said inspectors had found nothing to be worried about at the site, which is being built inside a mountain near Qom.
The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things. Its a hole in a mountain, ElBaradei told the newspaper.
A team of four IAEA inspectors flew to Iran on October 25 for a first visit of the site, a month after the revelation of its existence had triggered widespread outrage in the West, which suspects Iran is enriching uranium with an ultimate goal of using it to make atomic weapons. Tehran strongly denies the charge.
Iran has already been enriching uranium - in defiance of three sets of UN sanctions - for several years at another plant in the central city of Natanz.
Enriched uranium produces fuel for civilian reactors, but in a highly extended form can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Until now, the IAEA has declined to comment on whether its inspectors found anything surprising at the site, or whether they were given full access to the site as well as access to the necessary documentation and individuals.
Under ElBaradeis proposal, Iran will ship out most of its known low-enriched uranium - about 1,200kg - to Russia for further enrichment. The material will then be turned into fuel by France.
Theres total distrust on the part of Iran, ElBaradei said.
Some reports have suggested Iran wants to ship out the uranium piecemeal, not all at once.
But that was not the issue, ElBaradei said.
The issue is timing: whether the uranium goes out and then some time later they get the fuel, as was agreed in Geneva, or whether it only goes at the same time as the fuel is delivered.
A simultaneous exchange would not defuse the crisis, and the whole idea is to defuse the crisis, ElBaradei said.
Compromise proposals were being explored, the IAEA continued.
One would be to send Irans uranium to a third country, which could be a friendly country to Iran, and it stays there. Park it in another state, then later bring in the fuel. The issue is to get it out, and so create the time and space to start building trust, ElBaradei said.