Iran to reply to IAEA-backed draft agreement on nuclear fuel next week: report

TEHRAN, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran said on Friday that it will respond next week to the draft agreement presented by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about providing higher-level enriched uranium for Iran, the English-language satellite channel Press TV reported.

"We are in fact working and elaborating on all details of this proposal, from technical aspect and all other dimensions," Iran's representative to the IAEA Ali Soltanieh was quoted as saying.

"I will inform the director-general of the IAEA (Mohamed ElBaradei) next week as soon as I am back in Vienna about our evaluation," he said.

Soltanieh said that Iran also made "constructive proposals" during the meeting of representatives from Iran, the United States, Russia, France and the IAEA in Vienna from Monday to Wednesday to discuss the nuclear-fuel supply for a research reactor in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

"Therefore we are also waiting for the other parties to study our proposals and to reflect the results of the evaluation," he said.

Soltanieh did not reveal any details of the Iranian proposals, but Press TV earlier quoted a senior member of the Iranian negotiating team as saying that Iran prefers to buy the fuel from an international seller.

The nuclear-fuel talks in Vienna concluded on Wednesday without a final agreement, but ElBaradei presented a proposal for the four countries to mull, saying he hoped that all parties could make a firm response to his draft deal by Friday.

The draft agreement, presented by the IAEA on Wednesday, calls for shipping most of Iran's existing low-grade enriched uranium to Russia and France, where it would be processed into fuel rods with a purity of 20 percent.

The higher-level enriched uranium would be transported back to Iran to be used in a research reactor in Tehran for the manufacture of medical radioisotopes.