Renewed hope in negotiation with Iran at nuclear summit

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, claimed today that Iranian officials are displaying a new spirit of flexibility, renewing hope of a nuclear swap deal that could stave off a bitter confrontation over Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

“There is a positive development and a change in approach but I can’t share that with you,” he told reporters after a nuclear summit in Washington.

In the fall, hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran were raised when Iranian officials appeared to agree to a UN-backed deal in which Iran would hand over 2,420 pounds (1,100 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium which would then be enriched to a higher level, and be returned for use in a research reactor for medical treatments.

The deal would have been a breakthrough in the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program, because it would remove most of the low-enriched uranium in Iran that Western powers fear will be turned into fuel for a nuclear weapon, build trust, and provide a face-saving way for Iran to stop enriching uranium. (The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran stop enrichment because Western powers no longer trust that it will be used for peaceful purposes. Uranium enriched to a low level, around 3.5 percent, can be used to fuel a reactor, but if enrichment continues to 95 percent, it can be used in building a nuclear bomb. Under the proposed deal, Western powers would return uranium enriched at 20 percent, for use in cancer treatments.)

But the deal fell through because of the details, said Davutoglu, who has traveled to Iran five times since August and spoken for more than 14 hours with senior Iranian officials and politicians, including the Supreme Leader, in an effort to broker a compromise. He said the main problem was timing. Iran wanted a simultaneous swap, but that Western powers wanted to take the low-enriched uranium and enrich it themselves, a process that would take about 10 months. He said this was because Western powers did not have enough medium-uranium to give Iran.

“If we had 116 kgs today, I assure you that tomorrow I will get you 1,200 [low-enriched uranium] from Iran,” he said. “Both sides agree on that.”

He said Iranians had lowered their demands.

“At the time they were insisting on simultaneous exchange in Iran, in installments,” he said. “But now they are more flexible.”

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Press TV in Iran that Iran had already reached an understanding with the West on a compromise over the deal. US officials could not be immediately reached for a comment.

But European diplomats -- fresh from a two-day nuclear summit in Washington that largely focused on Iran’s nuclear ambitions -- were skeptical that the moves by Iran were anything more than an effort to delay a new round of sanctions in the UN Security Council.

“We are very pessimistic,” said one European diplomat who asked that his name not be used due to the sensitivity of the matter. “Iran has been making conflicting announcements, which shows they are not ready to accept.”

He said that if Turkey wants to keep trying to broker a deal, then Turkey is welcome to do so, provided that those efforts don’t slow down the move towards sanctions.

He said that Iranian officials themselves came up with the idea of the swap deal last June, and approached the UN nuclear watch dog about it. But once Western powers agreed to the deal, Iranian officials continuously changed their demands, giving the impression that the regime was merely using the deal as a delaying tactic.