Iran hints may accept nuclear deal

TEHRAN (Reuters/AFP) - Iran said on Monday it could endorse a UN deal for it to send potential nuclear fuel abroad for processing, contradicting lawmakers who rejected the plan sought by world powers as a trap.
The remark by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was the most positive yet from a senior Iranian official and hinted at fierce backroom debate between hardliners and moderates in the faction-ridden Iranian leadership on whether to accept the deal.
Frances Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said it was urgent for world powers to make a deal with Tehran to avert an Israeli strike.
They (Israel) will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us. So that is an additional risk and that is why we must decrease the tension and solve the problem. Hopefully we are going to stop this race to a confrontation, Kouchner said.
There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat, he added in an interview published by British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
In Iran, UN inspectors were examining a hitherto secret uranium enrichment site bunkered inside a mountain to verify Tehrans stance that the plant was meant to make only low-enriched fuel for electricity, not the high-purity version for nuclear arms. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran was mulling the UN-brokered deal which envisages sending Tehrans low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad to be converted into nuclear fuel and would announce a decision within days.
For the supply of (nuclear) fuel, we may buy it like in the past or we may deliver a part of our (low-enriched uranium) fuel that we dont need now, Mottaki told the official IRNA news agency, indicating for the first time that Tehran could possibly agree to the UN-drafted deal of transporting the LEU. Both options are on the table.
The UN-brokered deal was proposed first by world powers through the UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mottaki said. Making a decision to choose which option is on the agenda of the Islamic republic, and in the next few days the decision will be announced, Mottaki said.
Meanwhile, Manouchehr Mottaki said that arch-foe Israel was too weak to carry out any attack on Tehrans nuclear sites.
Mottakis remarks reported by Mehr news agency came as a team of UN inspectors were conducting checks on Tehrans recently-revealed second uranium enrichment plant.
We consider the Zionist regime currently to be in its weakest position and we do not see it has such a capacity to carry out a strike against Irans nuclear facilities, Mottaki said when a reporter asked him specifically about such a possibility by Israel.
A leading Iranian MP said the Islamic state should send its low enriched uranium abroad in several phases for further processing, Irans Arabic language al Alam television reported
Because the West has repeatedly violated agreements in the past, Iran should send its low enriched uranium abroad gradually and in several phases and necessary guarantees should be taken, said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliaments Foreign Affairs and National Security committee, al Alam reported.
Western diplomats say the notion of Iran importing foreign fuel is a non-starter, and a delaying tactic if Tehran pursues it, since UN sanctions ban trade with Iran in nuclear goods that could be weaponised, such as enriched uranium.
Western power diplomats say Iran was forced into revealing its second enrichment site near Qom to the IAEA a month ago because their intelligence agencies had already detected it.
The inspectors aimed to compare engineering designs to be provided by Iran with the actual look of the facility, interview scientists and other employees, and take soil samples to check for traces of activity of a military nuclear nature.
Borujerdi, meanwhile, has been critical of the UN-brokered deal but said in remarks published on Monday that Iran should give its LEU in a gradual way as it would ensure Tehrans right to enrich uranium.
Moscow, Irans close ally, too urged world powers to have maximum patience with Tehran over the nuclear issue.
World powers should show maximum patience in the Iranian nuclear crisis, a top Russian foreign ministry official said Monday, in the latest sign of Moscows unwillingness to give Tehran ultimatums.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, speaking in a newspaper interview, hailed a UN atomic agency-brokered plan for Iranian uranium to be further enriched abroad in states including Russia as a way to cool down emotions.
We should not give the impression that everything has stayed as it was, he told the Vremya Novostei daily. On the contrary, we need to give the Iranians positive stimuli.
And will it be possible to do this if it is presumed that the Iranians are wasting time?
Ryabkov refused to be drawn on whether Russia has a deadline for Iran to answer the remaining questions on its nuclear drive. Some Western powers have suggested Tehran has until December.