TEHRAN: Iran said that it was ready to send its uranium abroad for further enrichment as requested by the UN. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the decision in an interview with state Iranian television.
He said Iran will have “no problem” giving the West its low-enriched uranium and taking it back several months later when it is enriched by 20 percent. The decision could signal a major shift in the Iranian position on the issue. Still, it was unclear how much of a concession the Ahmadinejad comments represented, even though he appeared to be saying for the first time that Iran was willing to ship out its enriched uranium and wait for it to be returned in the form of fuel for its Tehran research reactor. But his time frame of four or five months appeared to fall short of the year that Western officials say it would take for Iran’s enriched fuel to be turned into fuel rods for the reactor.
If that difference cannot be bridged, it could allow Iranian officials to assert that the deal failed due to Western foot-dragging, despite their readiness to accept the proposed formula of shipping out the bulk of their enriched uranium and waiting for it to be converted and returned as fuel.
Ahmadinejad also did not address whether his country was ready to ship out most of its stockpile in one batch — another condition set by the six world powers endorsing the fuel swap. If Iran were to agree to export most of its enriched uranium in one shipment, it would delay its ability to make a nuclear weapon by stripping it of the material it needs to make the fissile core of a warhead.

LONDON : The UN nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence that it has experimented with highly advanced nuclear warhead designs, a British newspaper reported on Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes Iranian scientists may have tested components of the sophisticated technology, known as a “two-point implosion” device, the Guardian reported.

This technology — whose existence is secret in the United States and Britain — would allow for the production of smaller and simpler warheads and reduce the diameter of a warhead and make it easier to put on a missile, it said.

The Guardian cited previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the IAEA, drawn in part from reports submitted by western intelligence agencies, and presented to Iran for response.

An unnamed European advisor on nuclear issues told the newspaper: “It is breathtaking that Iran could be working on this sort of material.”

Western powers have long feared that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, something it denies.

Iran and western powers are currently engaged in talks over how to procure nuclear fuel for an Iranian research reactor. Under a UN-brokered proposal Iran would send its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for conversion into fuel for the reactor. Iran says it would rather buy the fuel directly.