An agreement enabling Iran to swap its uranium in Turkey for enrichment is unlikely to prevent new sanctions being imposed on Tehran, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
“Let’s not deceive ourselves, a solution to the issue of (the Iranian civilian nuclear reactor), if that’s the case, does not settle the problem posed by Iran’s nuclear programme,” Bernard Valero told journalists in Paris.
Mr. Valero said new sanctions against Iran would be drawn up in the UN Security Council despite this latest development, unless authorities in Tehran stopped violating resolutions by the council and by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He said the uranium swap did not address the main issues, such as the uranium enrichment programme at Natanz and the construction of a heavy—water reactor at Arak.
The agreement hammered out by Iran, Turkey and Brazil calls for Iran to ship 1,200 kilogrammes of low enriched uranium to Turkey for storage.
In exchange, Iran would receive about 120 kilogrammes of uranium enriched to 20 per cent in Russia and France for a medical reactor in Tehran.
