Brazilian and Turkish government officials said Sunday that their leaders had brokered a tentative compromise with Iran in the international standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, a development that could undermine efforts in the United Nations to impose new sanctions on the Iranians. A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that after 17 hours of talks in Tehran, ministers from Brazil, Iran and Turkey had reached an agreement on the “principles” to revive a stalled nuclear fuel-swap deal backed by the United Nations. The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the deal would be presented to the leaders of the countries for “final touches,” with a statement on the agreement expected as early as Monday. The exact terms, notably the amount of nuclear fuel to be swapped, were not revealed.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, canceled an official visit to Azerbaijan late Sunday and instead joined officials in Tehran in what was seen as a sign of progress in the talks. The Brazilian and Turkish leaders have been trying to revive a deal reached last October in which Iran would ship much of its stockpile of enriched uranium abroad for further processing; the uranium would then return as fuel rods for a medical research reactor. Mr. Erdogan suggested to reporters in Turkey before leaving for Iran that the uranium swap could take place in Turkey. In the months since the deal was first reached, Iran rejected and then accepted it multiple times, with different conditions. Its unwillingness to give a straightforward answer was seen by critics as a delaying tactic. It was unclear Sunday whether the Obama administration, which has insisted on the need for new sanctions, would take any new iteration of the deal.
The original terms were considered attractive to the United States and its allies because Iran would have temporarily relinquished most of its uranium. Because Iran has produced more uranium since then, the deal would very likely be less acceptable today. But the blessing of Turkey and Brazil for such a swap agreement could put the Obama administration in the awkward position of appearing to take an unreasonably hard line. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, met three times on Sunday with Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A diplomat from the Brazilian delegation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he remained “optimistic” that the leaders would announce a deal Monday that would avoid new United Nations sanctions. The Brazilian delegation was scheduled to depart Tehran just after midday on Monday for a European Union-Latin American summit meeting in Madrid.
Mr. da Silva is trying to leverage his friendly ties with Iran’s government to help broker a compromise. Like Brazil, Turkey also has been seeking to draw Iran back to negotiations as pressure mounts for passage of another sanctions resolution. American diplomats and the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said last week that Brazil’s efforts were the “last chance” to avoid sanctions. Iran has insisted that its nuclear work is intended only for peaceful purposes like energy production. But the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency has said that Iran has not cooperated fully with its investigation into whether the country’s program is also intended to develop nuclear weapons.
On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton predicted that Mr. da Silva’s mediation effort would fail. She said Iran could be forced to prove its nuclear program was peaceful only with a new round of United Nations sanctions. “Every step of the way has demonstrated clearly to the world that Iran is not participating in the international arena in the way that we had asked them to do and that they continued to pursue their nuclear program,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters.
Author: Alexei Barrionuevo, Sebnem Arsu
