Iran agrees to cooperate over nukes — but hedges on deal

VIENNA — Iran's president pledged Thursday to work with the West to resolve a standoff over its nuclear program even as his country reportedly balked at a U.S.-backed deal to limit its uranium enrichment and curb its ability to make a nuclear warhead.

A Western diplomat said Iran rejected a plan to export most of its enriched uranium, offering instead to enrich it to a higher level inside the country under U.N. supervision.

The disconnect between the words of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Tehran's decision, as related by the diplomat, reflected the difficulties facing international negotiators trying to persuade Iran to give up enrichment.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds told the European Union's rotating presidency, was dismissive after seeing the offer.

"It's the same old tricks," he told the AP: "A back-and-forth for further talks."

Iran was considering a plan proposed last week by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei at talks involving Iran, the U.S., Russia and France. A negotiator told The Associated Press that the draft would commit Iran to delivering 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia in one shipment for further enrichment and conversion into fuel for a Tehran research reactor.

Sending that amount in one batch would leave Tehran without enough material to make weapons-grade uranium should it decide to make a warhead. Experts say Iran would need at least a year to produce enough to make up for the exported material, giving the international community a window of opportunity to persuade the Islamic Republic to freeze its enrichment program.

According to the Western diplomat familiar with the reply, the Islamic Republic rejected the main thrust of the offer — shipping out most of its stockpile — and was instead proposing to further enrich it inside Iran under IAEA supervision.

If it was enriched domestically to a higher level — as the diplomat said it wants to — that could speed up its ability to make weapons-grade uranium.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog gave few details aside from saying Iran had provided an "initial response" to the draft.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the U.S. needs "further clarification, and I think it's also fair to say that we need a formal response from Iran."