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  Date / Time: 10/23/2009 5:24 AM UTC

  Hopes rise of end to impasse as Iran gets two days to back nuclear deal
  

  Hopes rise of end to impasse as Iran gets two days to back nuclear deal

  Enriched uranium would be processed in Russia

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  • Julian Borger in Vienna
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 October 2009 19.37 BST

  

  IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei at the agency's headquarters in Vienna. Photograph: Samuel Kubani/AFP/Getty Images

  Iran has been given two days to approve a uranium deal that the United Nations says could defuse the long-running crisis over the country's nuclear programme.

  The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog organisation, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the draft agreement to ship out 75% of Iran's enriched uranium for processing abroad "could open the way for a complete normalisation of relations between Iran and the international community".

  The Iranian delegation to the talks in Vienna cautiously welcomed the deal as being "on the right track", but said it would be up to Tehran to approve the deal.

  Under the draft agreement ElBaradei put forward during two and a half days of negotiations, 1,200kg of Iranian low enriched uranium (LEU) would be sent to Russia before the end of the year for further enrichment and then to France for fabrication into fuel for use in Tehran's research reactor, which makes medical isotopes.

  The process would take about a year, during which time the Iranian stockpile of enriched uranium – seen as a potential weapons threat by the west and Israel – would be significantly reduced.

  The deal would represent the most significant progress since 2003 in the impasse over Iran's nuclear programme. ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), described the proposal as "a very important confidence-building measure that can defuse a crisis that has been going on for a number of years and open space for negotiation". He set a deadline of Friday for official ratification.

  However, it does not address Iran's continued enrichment of uranium, in defiance of UN security council resolutions. That is due to be negotiated separately at the end of the month.

  With its enrichment plant operating at the current rate, Iran could replenish its stockpile in less than a year.

  However, ElBaradei said the proposal represented a "balance approach" and he hoped that the governments involved would "see the big picture" and approve it. "I cross my fingers that by Friday we have an OK by all the parties concerned," he said.

  The deadline applies to all the parties involved in the talks – Iran, Russia, France and the US – but diplomats at the negotiations said the only signature seriously in doubt was that of Iran.

  "Iran has a pretty clear decision to make. It couldn't be a clearer test of Iran's intentions," one diplomat said after the talks.

  Jacques Audibert, the political director of France's foreign ministry, said: "This is a proposal that suits France and all our partners. Now we have to wait and see if Iran will accept it. They have two days to let us know if it suits them."

  The west believes that Iran's stockpile of uranium is ultimately intended not for power stations, as Tehran insists, but for the construction of nuclear warheads. The removal of three-quarters of that stockpile would reduce tensions and probably push back the threat of Israeli military action aimed at preventing Iran from developing a weapon.

  Tehran had sent a relatively low-ranking delegation, led by its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.

  Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Soltanieh said: "We have to thoroughly study this text and … come back and reflect our opinion and suggestions or comments in order to have an amicable solution at the end of the day."

  Western diplomats saw his comments as a possible threat that Iran would try to extend negotiations beyond Friday, and said that they would resist any such attempt.

  The four signatories to the draft agreement are Iran, France, Russia and the IAEA. The US took part in the Vienna talks but is not a formal party to the deal. However, the US and Iran struck a provisional bilateral agreement, also brokered by the IAEA, in which Washington would supply safety equipment for the Tehran reactor.

  That deal is contingent on agreement over the shipping of Iran's uranium, but if signed, it would represent the most significant business transaction between the two countries since Iran's Islamic revolution 30 years ago.

  "If Iran is serious about taking practical steps to address the international community's deep concerns about its nuclear programme, we will continue to engage, both multilaterally and bilaterally, to discuss the full range of issues that have divided Iran and the United States for too long," the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said.

  "The door is open to a better future for Iran, but the process of engagement cannot be open-ended. We are not prepared to talk just for the sake of talking."

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