Iran 'close to deal' for Kazakh uranium

Daniel Nasaw, Washington
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 December 2009
Iran is said to be close to an agreement to buy more than 1,300 tons of uranium ore from Kazakhstan, a move that would allow the country to pursue its nuclear programme without conditions imposed in a UN-brokered uranium-for-fuel swap.
The deal, thought to be worth about $450m (£280m) for Kazakhstan, could yield nuclear fuel to keep Iran's medical and research reactors churning, and, western countries fear, further its nuclear weapons programme. The transfer of purified uranium was reported by the Associated Press, which cited a report produced by an unnamed member state of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The price is high because of the secret nature of the deal and due to Iran's commitment to keep secret the elements supplying the material," a two-page summary of an intelligence report said. An official of the country which drew up the report said "elements" refers to rogue officials in the Kazakh government brokering the deal.
Iran is under three sets of UN security council sanctions for refusing to freeze its enrichment programme that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Tehran denies such aspirations. Any attempt to import such a large amount of uranium ore would be in violation of those sanctions, which ban exports to Iran of all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology that could contribute to its enrichment activities.
In New York, Burkina Faso's UN ambassador Michel Kafando, a co-chair of the security council's Iran sanctions committee, referred questions about a potential deal between Iran and Kazakhstan to his sanctions adviser, Zongo Saidou. Saidou told AP that, as far as he knew, none of the UN's member nations had alerted the committee about any such allegation.
The material Iran is trying to get needs to be converted to a uranium gas, which is then processed into nuclear fuel or enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
Iran's Tehran research reactor, which produces medical isotopes and operates under the IAEA safeguards, will run out of fuel in 18 months, and the ore deal suggests Iran wants a stock of fuel to keep it running.