Brazil not talking uranium enrichment with Iran: official

BRASILIA
Petroleumworld.com, Feb 05, 2010

Brazil has not discussed enriching uranium for Iran under an international deal, its foreign ministry said Thursday, contradicting an Iranian official's reported comments that the South American nation might take on that role.

"There have not been any conversations about enriching nuclear fuel in Brazil," a ministry spokesman told AFP.

He was reacting to a reported comment by Iran's atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi that Tehran would be willing to send its stocks of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Brazil, France or an unnamed Asian country to be further purified into reactor fuel.

Enrichment outside of Iran is a central proposition of a UN-brokered deal the United States and other Western nations are pushing for out of fears that unsupervised enrichment in Iran could support a suspected nuclear weapons program.

But Brazil's state nuclear entity, Brazilian Nuclear Industries, stressed that it would be unable to carry out such a task even if it were agreed.

"Brazil started producing enriched uranium only in 2009, and its production is only in its initial stages," a spokeswoman told AFP.

She added that Brazil currently has to buy much of its own uranium requirements abroad, a situation unlikely to change before 2014.

Brazil has the sixth-biggest uranium reserves in the world, and its government controls all stages of nuclear fuel production including uranium enrichment.

The Latin American nation has made a point of building friendly relations with Iran. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said he opposes sanctions the United States and EU countries are threatening against Tehran over its nuclear program.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who visited Brazil at the end of last year, unbalanced his critics on Tuesday when he suggested that a deal struck last October envisaging Iran sending some 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium abroad was suddenly back on.

But hours after his statement, Iran emphasized its ambitions to be a major 21st century power by launching a new space rocket.

Western nations expressed fear the technology could be used to launch long-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

Story from AFP
AFP 02/04/2010 19:05

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