Tue 09 February 2010 | 12:26 GMT Text size:

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has said that Tehran is enriching uranium but still ready for talks on a nuclear fuel swap with the West.

The comments by spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast are the latest in a series of alternately defiant and conciliatory statements on the nuclear issue by Tehran.

“The issue of a nuclear fuel swap [with the West] … is still open [to talks]. We have announced our conditions in a clear and transparent way. If the other sides meet our conditions and adopt a realistic approach, the swap would be possible,” Mehmanparast told reporters at his weekly briefing on Tuesday.

He added that a fuel swap with Western countries, however, did not require Iran to relinquish other ways of supplying the fuel, according to Iran's Press TV.

“It (the swap) by no means goes counter to our obtaining the required fuel through other means,” Mehmanparast said, reiterating that Iran had the right to produce higher enriched uranium for its Tehran medical reactor under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The spokesman said Iran could not wait for Western countries to further “waste time” while 850,000 cancer patients were in dire need of medicine.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier tasked the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran with enriching uranium to 20 percent in order to provide fuel for Tehran's research reactor, which produces medical isotopes for cancer patients and is soon to run out of fuel.

On the president's order, Iran on Tuesday began enriching uranium to a level of 20 percent at its Natanz enrichment facility under the surveillance of inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog.

A proposal backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), wants Tehran to send most of its domestically-produced low enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for further enrichment.

Iran has called for the swap deal to take place on its own soil, arguing that if it ships the bulk of its enriched uranium, there will be no guarantee that the fuel would eventually reach the country.

The US, however, insists that the deal would see no amendments, asking Iran to accept it in its original form.

Press TV