TEHRAN, July 30, (Agencies): Iran said on Friday it was ready for immediate talks with the United States, Russia and France over an exchange of nuclear fuel and added that it was also against stockpiling higher enriched uranium.

The comments by the Islamic republic’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi came as Washington decided to fan out envoys across Asia, Middle East and the United Arab Emirates asking its partners to levy tighter sanctions against Tehran.

“We are ready even in the next few days to start negotiations with the other parties” over the fuel swap, Salehi was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency.
He said talks on this issue with the so-called Vienna group comprising the United States, Russia and France will be held in Vienna, where the UN atomic watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based.

The Vienna group has raised questions about a proposal forwarded by Iran, Brazil and Turkey concerning a fuel swap.
The May 17 proposal, known as the Tehran Declaration, stipulates that Tehran send 1,200 kilogrammes of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey in return for 20 percent high-enriched uranium to be supplied at a later date.

The enriched uranium, when converted into fuel plates, will be used for a Tehran-based research reactor.
Salehi said Iran has already responded to the questions raised by the Vienna group, but that any other “technical” queries can be answered during another meeting.
The Tehran Declaration was Iran’s counter-proposal to an earlier plan drafted by the IAEA for a fuel swap deal.

After that plan hit deadlock, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Salehi to produce 20 percent enriched uranium inside the country, in defiance of world powers which want Tehran to stop the sensitive process.

Enriching uranium is at the heart of a controversy over Iran’s nuclear programme because the material can be used to power nuclear reactors as well as to make atom bombs.
Experts say that by enriching uranium to 20 percent, Iran has theoretically come closer to enriching it to the 90 percent purity required for making nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies that its uranium enrichment programme has any military goals. But the world powers which dismiss Tehran’s arguments have gone ahead and levied new sanctions against Iran.
On Friday, Salehi again attempted to clarify Iran’s position, saying that it was against stockpiling the 20 percent enriched uranium.

“We need 20 percent fuel for the Tehran research reactor at the moment,” Salehi said. “We have said before that we are producing 20 percent only for our needs. We do not want to stockpile 20 percent fuel.”
He and other Iranian officials have previously said that if Iran gets the fuel required for the Tehran reactor which makes medical isotopes, it would stop producing the high-enriched material.
Salehi, meanwhile, indicated that the overall nuclear talks between Iran and the six world powers — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany — could be held in Turkey at the the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, in mid-September.

“As I know, Iran prefers to organise these talks in Turkey,” he told ISNA news agency.
Ahmadinejad has ordered a freeze on these talks until the end of August as a “penalty” for UN sanctions.
Iran’s arch-foe the United States announced on Thursday that top officials will visit China, the United Arab Emirates and other key countries in support of tighter sanctions against Tehran.
“China is of concern to us in this regard,” Robert Einhorn, the US State Department’s special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“We need for them to enforce the Security Council resolutions conscientiously and we also need for them not to ‘backfill’ when responsible countries have distanced themselves from Iran,” he said.
China, which has emerged as Iran’s largest trading partner in recent years, backed the latest UN sanctions, but has consistently insisted on a diplomatic solution to the nuclear controversy.
On Friday, Beijing opposed the recent unilateral sanctions imposed by the European Union targeting Iran’s vital energy sector.

“China disapproves of the unilateral sanctions put in place by the EU against Iran,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement.
“We hope the relevant parties will adhere to diplomatic means on the issue, and properly resolve the issue through talks and negotiation,” she said.

Disapproves
The spokeswoman welcomed Iran’s announcement that it was ready for immediate talks with the United States, Russia and France over an exchange of nuclear fuel, saying she hoped talks would begin “as soon as possible”.
European foreign ministers on Monday formally adopted measures targeting Iran’s oil and gas industries, going beyond a fourth set of UN sanctions imposed last month over its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.

Canada then followed suit.
The EU measures include a ban on the sale of equipment, technology and services to Iran’s energy sector, hitting activities in refining, liquefied natural gas, exploration and production, diplomats said.
New investments in the energy sector are also banned.
The moves, which follow similar sanctions imposed by the United States, are aimed at reviving moribund talks between Iran and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Skeptical
Israel is skeptical that a new round of sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program will be effective, but there is “still time” for them to work, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday.
“They’re determined to get nuclear military capability. We see it,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” television program. “I don’t believe that sanctions will work.”
But he said that despite skepticism, Israel was willing to give the latest round of United Nations pressure on Tehran more time to have an effect.

“I think that the essence of it we still believe it’s still time for sanctions, to see whether they’re working. But as I said, we have to realize, we cannot wink in front of tough realities, however tough they might be.”
Iran will never give up its right to enrich uranium, a senior official said on Friday, but it could suspend higher-level work for several years if a long-delayed fuel swap can be agreed with foreign powers.
Iran’s position on the process may be central to reviving stalled talks with global powers which have imposed tighter sanctions on the Islamic Republic, fearing that it is trying to make an atomic bomb.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday that Iran would stop enriching uranium to 20 percent purity if the fuel swap is agreed.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, said it was out of the question for Iran to promise never to enrich uranium, but added that the higher-grade work could be put on hold.
Iran has thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium to the 3.5 percent level it says it needs for generating power. It began refining small amounts to the 20 percent level in February, alarming Western powers because this takes the material closer to the grade needed for a nuclear weapon.
“Twenty-percent enrichment is our right and we would never cede this right. But despite that right, since its need is not felt (in the event of a fuel swap), there is no necessity for doing that,” Salehi told the semi-official Mehr news agency.
The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran cease all uranium enrichment.
Iran has held no substantive talks with world powers since it struck a fuel swap deal with Russia, France and the United States in October. That unravelled when Tehran sought further conditions.
Under the deal Iran would have sent 1.2 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (LEU) — about 70 percent of its stockpile at the time — abroad in exchange for specially processed fuel rods needed to keep a Tehran medical research reactor running.

Hikers
Amnesty International on Friday called on Iranian authorities to release three young US nationals who have been detained without charge or trial for the past 12 months.
Iranian forces arrested Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, on July 31, 2009, near the Iraqi-Iranian border during what the trio say was a hiking holiday in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq.
“It appears clear that the Iranian authorities do not have substantial grounds to prosecute these three individuals,” Malcolm Smart, Middle East director of the London-based Amnesty International, said in a statement.

“We fear that they may be held on account of their nationality,” he said. “If so, they should be released immediately and allowed to leave Iran.”
Amnesty said that otherwise the three young Americans should be “charged with recognisably criminal offences and be tried according to international standards for a fair trial.”
Iranian officials have alleged that the three planned to carry out “acts of espionage” in the Islamic republic, prompting denials from the US government and their families.
“Statements by senior Iranian leaders... have suggested that the three may be being detained in order to put pressure on the US government and to extract diplomatic concessions,” said Amnesty.
Cindy Hickey was sitting in her home office last summer, preparing a receipt for a client of her animal physical therapy business when the phone rang. She picked up, then nearly hung up, thinking it was a sales call.

“Then I heard ‘Baghdad’ and ‘embassy’ and that got my attention,” Hickey said. “And she told me, ‘Your son Shane is believed to have been taken by Iranian authorities. That’s all the information we have, we will call you as soon as we have more information.’ My adrenaline peaked. My heart sank. And I immediately went into a mode of, what are we going to do to take care of this immediately?”
A year later, Hickey and the other mothers of three Americans detained in Iran since July 31, 2009, are still in that mode. They have put their own careers on hold and turned to what’s become a full-time job for them: attempting to secure their children’s release from Tehran’s Evin Prison in the face of espionage accusations by the Iranian government.

The three women have done hundreds of media interviews. Written untold pages of letters. Worked diplomatic channels. Organized dozens of rallies and vigils. Researched the intricacies of Iranian law and international human rights treaties. Monitored Iranian news sources. And kept in constant contact with each other and other members of their families.
But most days, they feel no closer to their goal than the day they found out their three children — Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal — had been captured.
“The frustration you feel accumulates. The powerlessness, all that stuff accumulates,” Shourd’s mother, Nora, said. “We’re all so overwhelmed by the intensity of the work it takes to do this. We can’t just keep doing this. But of course we’re going to.”

Sarah Shourd, Bauer and Fattal met as students at the University of California at Berkeley. Last summer, Bauer, 28, a freelance journalist, and Shourd, 31, an English teacher, were living in Damascus, Syria. Bauer had just finished a magazine assignment, and Shourd was planning to learn Arabic.
Fattal, 28, had been overseas as a teaching assistant with the International Honors Program since January 2009. During his visit to Damascus, the three decided to take a hiking trip in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, according to their families.