By DPA
Tehran : Iran Monday rejected reports that quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having accepted a proposal by Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium outside Iran.
A presidential office spokesman told the Press TV network that the president had merely said during the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) summit in Riyadh that proposals made “by a brotherly and friendly country (Saudi Arabia)” would be studied by Tehran like other constructive proposals.
The Tehran press Monday quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in Riyadh that while pursuing the uranium enrichment process at home, Iran would also positively consider other options, such as the formation of a regional uranium consortium.
The proposal was initially made by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal earlier this month but immediately rejected by Iran’s deputy chief nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeidi as “totally unacceptable.”
Vaeidi said that any proposal to pursue the enrichment process outside Iran was “meaningless,” and if aimed at stopping enrichment on Iranian soil, “they would be totally unacceptable.”
Top Iranian officials, including President Ahmadinejad and former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, have several times stressed that even in the case of the formation of a uranium consortium, Iran would prefer to have its own nuclear fuel cycle in order to avoid dependency on the West.
Ahmadinejad has in the past two years declared Iran’s intention to pursue its nuclear programme, including uranium enrichment, and said that even Western threats would not make the Islamic state retreat “one iota” from this right.