TEHRAN (Reuters) – Influential Iranian lawmakers yesterday criticised a UN-drafted agreement that requires Tehran to send its atomic stockpile abroad for processing.
Their comments were reported as UN inspectors left Vienna for Iran to examine a nuclear site that has heightened Western fears of a covert Iranian programme to develop atomic bombs.
The draft International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deal requires Iran to cut its atomic stockpile but the Tehran government missed a Friday deadline for responding to it. Iran said its answer would be given next week.
Russia, France and the United States, the other parties to the deal, have endorsed the plan, and US President Barack Obama held talks by telephone with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev about Iran yesterday.
Parliament speaker Ali Larijani accused Western powers of trying to “cheat” Iran.
“They insist on going in a direction that speaks of cheating. They are imposing some things on Iran,” Larijani told the student news agency ISNA, echoing some officials who suggested on Friday that instead of accepting the draft, Iran should buy nuclear fuel from abroad.
“I see no links between providing the fuel for the Tehran reactor and sending Iran’s low enriched uranium abroad.”
The agreement requires Iran to send 1.2 tonnes of its known 1.5-tonne stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France by the end of the year, Western diplomats say.
