WASHINGTON: Broadening its offer, the US has said it would allow Iran to keep its stock of enriched nuclear fuel with several nations, including Turkey, for temporary safekeeping, official sources said.
With Iran yet to agree to earlier offer from western powers asking it to keep its uranium stockpiles with Russia, the US has now proposed to send Iranian uranium to Turkey, the New York Times reported today saying this had been confirmed by the IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
Citing unnamed administration officials, the report said that the overtures to store uranium with Russia have been ignored. Instead, Tehran has revived an old counterproposal that calls for international arms inspectors to take custody of much of their fuel, but keep it on Kish, a Persian Gulf resort island that is a part of Iran.
An offer rejected by Washington fearing a repeat of 2003 when North Korea had converted its fuel into the material for several nuclear weapons.
A senior Obama administration official said that Iran's proposal had been rejected because leaving the nuclear material on Iranian territory would allow for the possibility that the Iranians could evict the international inspectors at any moment, the paper said.
The official also said that they had now all but lost hope that Iran would follow through with an agreement reached in Geneva on October 1 to send its fuel out of the country temporarily.
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