The European Union is considering helping Iran to acquire a light-water nuclear reactor, but Tehran would have to give up enriching uranium on its soil as part of guarantees that it will not make atomic weapons, diplomats told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.
Under the deal being readied by European powers, Russia would enrich uranium on Iran’s behalf.
The process is used to produce reactor fuel but can also produce the core of a nuclear weapon.
The EU pledged on Monday in Brussels to make a ”bold” offer to persuade Iran to curb its atomic ambitions.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the 25-nation bloc, tasked with trying to defuse the West’s diplomatic stand-off with the Islamic state, could offer Tehran ”the most sophisticated” technology to help it address its power needs.
”The package involves Iran giving up industrial-scale enrichment and agreeing to having it done in Russia,” a diplomat close to the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
Iran would then get trade benefits — the Europeans have already promised to help Tehran get into the World Trade Organisation — and would ratify the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows for wider IAEA inspections, diplomats said.
But Iran would have to give up even its research into uranium enrichment that it has already started, and diplomats said this point could scupper the deal.
The West fears that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Tehran says it only wants to generate energy.
The United States is seeking sanctions from the UN Security Council, but it has failed to win support for the move and has given its European allies ”a couple of weeks” to draft a fresh approach.
The EU, whose package must also satisfy Russia and China, has until Friday — when negotiators from the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany meet in London — to complete its work.
Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has rejected any new EU offer that might demand that the Islamic republic halt uranium enrichment activities. — AFP
