Iran on Monday reiterated that it would not accept a reported Russian proposal to move its uranium enrichment to Russia, the official IRNA news agency reported." The country's high ranking officials intend to have full cycle of nuclear fuel production in our own soil," Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) spokesman Hossein Entezami was quoted assaying.

"When we talk about the entire cycle of producing the nuclear fuel inside Iran, we mean all stages of enrichment need to be conducted in this country relying on technical knowledge of Iranian experts," Entezami explained.

The spokesman stressed that Iran did propose international cooperation in its nuclear activities but that did not mean the country was ready to conduct any part of its enrichment activities abroad.

Entezami's reiteration came one day after the European trio of Britain, France and Germany sent a letter to the SNSC, which is in charge of the country's nuclear negotiations, to formally inform Tehran that they had agreed to resume bilateral nuclear talks. The European trio's message was delivered in reaction to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Thursday.

The UN nuclear watchdog decided at Thursday's meeting to postpone referral of Iran's case to the UN Security Council in order to offer more time for Tehran and the European Union (EU) to discuss an alleged Russian proposal, which was made to break the deadlock.

According to the proposal, Iran will be allowed to conduct uranium conversion activities on condition that the enrichment stage be moved to Russia, a measure that keeps Tehran from obtaining nuclear technology crucial to making atom bombs. Entezami termed the EU request of resuming talks as an "official response to Iran's request for finding a rational solution to this crisis", adding that "the dead-end of negotiations no longer exists".

"The result of the recent IAEA meeting proves that we can, relying on our rational conduct and elaborating our nation's demands, while respecting the international laws and our commitments and refraining from any type of extremism, achieve our goals in this respect," Entezami said.

The EU-Iran talks collapsed in August when Iran broke a suspension of uranium conversion, the precursor to making enriched uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear reactors and as the explosive core of atom bombs.

The IAEA in late September urged Iran to re-suspend the conversion activities or to face a referral of its nuclear case.

Source: Xinhua