Azerbaijan, Baku, April 30 / Trend T.Konyayeva /
Experts believe putting forward new proposals on the uranium exchange not backed by any specific action, Iran has made that the UN Security Council's member-states, which are configured for the use of sanctions, do not take them seriously.
"I think that Iran's proposal is a bit belatedly," Analyst of the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) Rouzbeh Parsi wrote in an e-mail to Trend. "Even those who want to give negotiations another chance are insisting on the Iranians actually doing something rather than just proposing different versions of a possible deal that's been around since last autumn."
Iran intends to negotiate with 14 member-states of the UN Security Council, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in mid-April. He said the country also plans to hold the indirect negotiations with other countries in connection with the proposed transaction on the uranium exchange.
Mottaki has not provided IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano with any new proposals on exchange of Tehran's low enriched uranium to nuclear fuel for its nuclear research reactor, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. Clinton commented on the outcome of the Mottaki- Amano talks held April 25 in Vienna.
"No one would accept Iran's proposal seriously, as they tried it months ago and then backed away from it," Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) Professor Barry Rubin said.
Head of the International Association of Iranian Researchers, Professor Hussein Ladzheverdi believes that Iran's latest proposals on the uranium exchange will not cause disagreements among member states in the UN Security Council, because so far the proposal had not even been submitted in writing.
"There are just talks on this proposal," Ladzheverdi told Trend over the telephone. "The offer was made in 2009 and during the past time there were just talking about it. Iran will never send its uranium abroad, and the UN Security Council members know it."
In October 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and "six international mediators on Iran" (Russia, the U.S., China, Britain, France and Germany) offered Tehran to exchange low-enriched uranium (3.5-percent) to high-enriched uranium (20-percent). According to this plan, Iran was proposed to export its LEU to Russia where it would be further enriched and then sent to France for processing it into fuel assemblies for the Tehran reactor.
But Tehran said it was ready to buy more highly enriched uranium or exchange with its reserves, provided that the exchange will be held in the Iranian territory. World powers and the IAEA, with its headquarters in Vienna, declined the proposal of Iran.
Nevertheless, the proposals could create divisions in the international community, as Iran holds "a careful game in a diplomatic and propaganda front, often overdoing the U.S," President of the Russian Institute for Middle East Studies Yevgeny Satanovsky said.
"One element of this game is the proposal on the uranium exchange, which can easily lead to disagreements - including among the Security Council's members," Satanovsky wrote Trend in an e-mail. "It is yet difficult to imagine the level of these differences, as exactly the same as to assume what more Iran will take to move in the path towards nuclear status."
E.Ostapenko, T.Jafarov contributed to the article.
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