Iran will consider 'swapping'

Reuters, here

"... The decision is expected to anger the United States and its allies that had called on Iran to accept a deal which aimed to delay Iran's potential ability of making bombs by at least a year by divesting Iran of most of its enriched uranium. 

A draft deal brokered by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, calls on Iran to send some 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France to be turned into fuel for a Tehran medical research reactor. 

"Surely we will not send our 3.5 percent fuel abroad but can review swapping it simultaneously with nuclear fuel inside Iran," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the ISNA students' news agency. ......Diplomacy is not black or white. Pressuring Iran to accept what they want is a non-diplomatic approach," Mottaki said......

If 70 percent of Iran's uranium is exported in one shipment, or at the most two shipments in quick succession, Tehran would need about a year to produce enough uranium to again have the stockpile it needs for a weapon.......

Mottaki did not say what would happen to the low-enriched fuel it was prepared to swap, but authorities have said in the past that it could be stockpiled in Iran under IAEA supervision. "Our experts will tell us how much fuel was needed to be swapped. We do not accept their experts' views," Mottaki said..."