West haggles with Iran over uranium
EU official offers Tehran fuel for reactor
They came, they talked and they laid out starkly differing positions.
The meeting on Wednesday between Iran and the world’s six leading powers in Baghdad was hardly the stuff of breakthroughs. Yet, by the modest standards of diplomacy with Tehran, the fact that the two sides talked in detail about what divides them counted as progress of sorts.
This dispute centres on one issue: Iran’s insistence on its right to enrich uranium. This highly sensitive process could be used to produce uranium enriched to the 3.5- per- cent purity needed to run nuclear power stations — and Iran adamantly maintains that is the sole aim — or to the 90 per cent needed for the fissile core of a modern nuclear weapon.
The safest option would be for Iran not to enrich at all, hence six United Nations resolutions make that demand. But the nuclear non- proliferation treaty grants all signatories the right to enrich, provided they obey the relevant safeguards.
Iran says that it has every right to master this process; the West and its allies fear the consequences of Tehran effectively seizing the means to build nuclear weapons. Almost a decade of diplomacy has failed to bridge that yawning gap.
Wednesday’s proposals fell into the category of what diplomats call CBMS, or confidence building measures.
Iran has enriched about 110 kilograms of uranium to 20- per- cent purity, a step closer to the level needed for nuclear weapons. When pressed for an explanation, it claimed to need this material for a civilian research reactor. But Iran lacks the technology to make the fuel for this plant. So Western officials have concluded that Tehran has no conceivable use for uranium enriched to this level.
So their opening proposal in Baghdad was for Iran to freeze production and hand over part of its existing stockpile of this material. In return, proposed Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Tehran would receive the fuel for its research reactor from other countries.
In addition, the contact group — consisting of Britain, the U. S., France, Russia, China and Germany — offered to review restrictions on the sale of spare parts for the country’s civil airliners if Iran gave up its stockpile.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that yesterday’s talks showed how sanctions on Iran could be scaled back. “As Iran takes a step toward the global community, the world community should take steps for weaker sanctions against Iran,” he said.
Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief negotiator, was put on the spot by the call to hand over the stockpile and did not offer a concrete response Wednesday. The talks are expected to continue today.
Wednesday’s proposals did not cover Iran’s stockpile of 5,500 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5- per- cent purity.
Regardless of whether Iran has any use for the 20- per- cent enriched uranium, transferring a single gram would amount to a symbolic concession. Iran wants the international trade sanctions, which are putting pressure on its economy, eased first.
Its representatives have a strategy of their own. By dangling concessions, they are trying to break the unity of the six powers and peel off Russia and China from their Western counterparts.
Iran wants to divide its opponents; the group of six are trying to extract the material that Tehran’s scientists have sacrificed so much to manufacture.