U.S. expects Iran's response on nuclear fuel no later than next week

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- The United States will wait for some days for Iran's response on uranium processing abroad, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Friday.

"I think we can stretch things a few days. But we're not going to wait forever," Kelly told reporters hours after Iran said that it will respond next week to a United Nations-brokered deal aimed at third-party enrichment of uranium for a Tehran reactor.

"We hope that they will next week provide a positive response," Kelly said, adding that "obviously we would have preferred to have a response today. We approach this with a sense of urgency."

The United States officially informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it supports the proposal to have Iran ship its uranium abroad for processing.

The IAEA set Friday as deadline for Iran to respond to the proposal.

"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 said in Tehran on Friday.

The Iranian official said that he would inform Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, about Iran's evaluation next week as soon as he is back in Vienna.

The proposal, 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 witha 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.