nuclear-news

Iran offers to halt enrichment, if West provides uranium, Dawn.com, 22 Sept 11, WASHINGTON: Iran has offered to stop its production of low enriched uranium, provided the West gives it the nuclear material, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview published in Thursday’s New York Times….

He reiterated his stance that Tehran is only pursuing a nuclear program for domestic purposes, and not for the production of atomic weapons as the West has alleged.

“This is not something we wish to produce and sell on the open market,” the Iranian leader said.

“Twenty per cent enriched uranium, as you know, is not useful for much of anything other than the production of cancer treatment medication. It is not useful for a power plant.”

Ahmadinejad, currently in New York where he is scheduled later Thursday to address the United Nations General Assembly, told the Times that the deal would spare Iran the trouble and expense of processing the enriched uranium itself….

The UN Security Council in the past has slapped four rounds of sanctions on Iran to get it to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which can produce fuel for a reactor but which it says — contrary to Ahmadinejad’s assertion — also can be used in a nuclear warhead.