Berlin, July 26 (DPA) Tehran Monday said the European Union (EU) and the US should settle the nuclear dispute with Iran through a fuel-swap deal, rather than sticking to sanctions.
‘The Tehran agreement and the Istanbul meeting should be used as an opportunity for understanding in the nuclear dispute and I call on all sides not to miss this chance to settle the issue,’ Iran’s atomic chief Ali-Akbar Salehi said on state television.
The foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Brazil met in Istanbul Sunday to revive an agreement reached in May to have Iran store 1,200 kg of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey until fuel for Tehran’s research reactor is delivered.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Istanbul that Iran would send a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency Monday just before the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
The Tehran agreement was rejected by world powers as insufficient. The UN Security Council then imposed a new resolution and fresh sanctions on Iran last month.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday warned the EU that siding and cooperating with the US against Iran would be considered ‘as an act of enmity which we would retaliate (against)’.
Although the proposed swap did not settle more than seven years of dispute over Iran’s enrichment programme, it has been regarded as a step to ease the crisis and pave the way for renewed diplomatic efforts.
