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TEHRAN: Proposals from world powers to supply nuclear fuel for a research reactor in Iran are still on the table, a leading MP said on Sunday a day after suggesting that Tehran could reject the deal.
"Our first option is to buy fuel of 20 per cent (enrichment)," ISNA and Mehr news agencies quoted Alaeddin Borujerdi, the head of parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, as saying.
"But if we cannot buy it we could make a limited exchange on condition that first we get fuel of 20 per cent," he added.
On Saturday Borujerdi said that Iran has decided to reject proposals from major powers for the supply of nuclear fuel, in a serious setback for UN-brokered efforts to allay Western concerns about its atomic ambitions.
Under the plan thrashed out in talks with France, Russia and the United States, Iran was to have shipped out most of its own stocks of low-enriched uranium (LEU) in return for fuel to power a research reactor in Tehran.
The proposals were designed to assuage fears that Iran could otherwise divert some of its LEU and further enrich it to the much higher levels of purity required to make an atomic bomb.
"We do not want to give part of our 1,200 kilos (more than 2,640 pounds) of enriched uranium in order to receive fuel of 20 per cent enrichment," Borujerdi told ISNA on Saturday.
"This option of giving our enriched uranium gradually or in one go is over now," he said.
On Sunday he was quoted as saying that Iran's Supreme National Security Council was tasked with taking the decisions that serve the country's interests.
A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday that it was "still waiting for the formal response" from Iran's envoy to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
The UN nuclear watchdog drafted the proposals under which Iran would ship out most of its known low-enriched uranium or LEU to Russia for further enrichment.
The material would then be turned into fuel rods by France to power the Tehran research reactor.
- AFP/yb
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