MORE IRANIAN BLACKMAIL

Iran Threatens to Back Out of Fuel Deal
Samuel Kubani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, right, the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived for talks in Vienna with representatives from France, Iran, Russia and the United States.

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: October 20, 2009

VIENNA — Iran opened two days of nuclear talks with the United States, Russia and France on Monday with veiled public threats that it could back away from an agreement to ship more than three-quarters of its stockpile of nuclear fuel out of the country, unless the West acceded to Iranian demands to provide it with new fuel.

Times Topics: Iran's Nuclear Program

Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency

Representatives from Iran, the United States, Russia and France held nuclear talks for four hours on Monday in Vienna.

At the end of a nearly four-hour session, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said little about the negotiations other than “We’re off to a good start.”

Other participants in the talks, which filled an oversize conference room at the agency’s headquarters, said that although Iran’s representatives did not reject outright the idea of sending the country’s fuel to Russia and France for further enrichment, its negotiators stopped well short of reaffirming the statements the country made in talks on Oct. 1.

In Tehran on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottak said that Iran had no plans to halt its disputed uranium enrichment work.

“The meetings with world powers and their behavior shows that Iran’s right to have peaceful nuclear technology has been accepted by them” Mr. Mottak, quoted by Reuters, said. “ Iran will never abandon its legal and obvious right,” he told a news conference.

Still, “we see serious development in the talks” he said, according to Reuters “The continuation of talks can lead to a deal over supplying Iran with the 20 percent enriched uranium.”

“This was opening-day posturing,” one participant in Monday’s talks said, declining to be identified because all sides had agreed not to discuss the specifics of the negotiations. “The Iranians are experienced at this, and you have to expect that their opening position isn’t going to be the one you want to hear.”

The talks are advertised as a meeting of technical experts, but much more is at stake. If Iran carries out its plan to use its own low-enriched uranium — produced in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions — to fuel a reactor in Tehran used for medical purposes, American officials say that that use would set aside, for about a year, fears that Iran could use the fuel to produce a nuclear weapon. After that, Iran’s continuing production of uranium would refill its stockpiles.

“Our object is to get a sizable amount of low-enriched uranium out of the country of Iran, making the world more secure,” said Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary, at a White House news briefing.

A senior administration official said, “By the end of these next two days we’ll know if the Iranians are serious and whether we have time” to pursue further diplomacy without fear that Iran is racing ahead to produce a weapon from fuel ostensibly intended for other purposes.

Iran’s public statements about the agreement this month have not been entirely negative; some have expressed support for the deal. American officials say they still cannot determine Iran’s real position, if it has decided on one.

“Publicly it’s hard for them to be seen making a concession,” one American official said. “But maybe they have decided, for their own reasons, that this sets a precedent that they like, because it legitimizes to some extent the fuel they made when the Security Council ordered them to stop.”

Iran’s chief negotiator did not attend the session here, evoking memories of nuclear diplomacy in the cold war, when the Soviet Union and the United States often met on the comparatively neutral ground of the Austrian capital. Instead, Iran’s delegation was led by its ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh. Some participants emerged from the meeting with the impression that Mr. Soltanieh’s instructions were to drag out the talks.

The proposal under negotiation originated from Iran’s request to refuel the small medical reactor, which has long been subjected to international inspections and is not considered part of a nuclear weapons program. In early summer, Mr. Obama’s top arms control aide, Gary Samore, came up with a proposal to test Iran’s declarations that it had been enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses: offer to help Iran fabricate fuel for the reactor, but only from its own supplies. By most estimates, Iran’s total known stockpile of fuel amounts to enough for one to two bombs, if it were further enriched.

If Iran exports 2,645 pounds of that fuel, the amount it says it needs for the medical reactor, for further refinement abroad, experts say that it could not replace that fuel for another year. Russia embraced the idea, most recently when President Dmitri A. Medvedev met Mr. Obama at the United Nations last month. If the fuel enrichment went ahead on Russian territory, Russia would profit significantly.

But in recent days the Iranians have repeatedly suggested that they might not ship the fuel out of the country at all, and would demand that the West sell them new fuel for the medical reactor. Leaving the existing fuel in the country would be too dangerous, the United States, Europe and Israel have said, given Iran’s history of hiding nuclear activity from international inspectors.

“The talks will be a test of the sincerity of those countries,” said Ali Sharisdian, the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization spokesman. “Should talks fail or sellers refuse to provide Iran with its required fuel, Iran will enrich uranium to the 20 percent level needed itself.”

So far Iran is not known to have enriched fuel beyond 5 percent, the level needed for reactors. Enrichment at 90 percent or more is needed for a sophisticated weapon.

On Sunday, the International Atomic Energy Agency is supposed to begin inspecting Iran’s newly revealed uranium enrichment center near Qum.