Tehran: Iran will no longer consider a proposal to move its uranium enrichment programme to Russian territory and is instead considering large-scale uranium enrichment at home, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday.
Russia has sought to persuade Iran to move its enrichment programme to Russian territory, which would allow closer international monitoring. Iran had insisted that the plan was negotiable and reached basic agreement with Moscow but details were never worked out.
``The Russian proposal is not on our agenda any more,'' Asefi said.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, meanwhile, said today Iran had no intention to use oil as a weapon in its confrontation with the West over its nuclear programme, contradicting Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi who said a day earlier that Tehran could use oil as a weapon if the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against it. ``The Islamic Republic of Iran is insisting to provide Asia with the oil it needs as a reliable and effective source of energy and will not use oil as a foreign policy instrument,'' he told a conference on energy and security issues in Tehran on Sunday.
Iran is the number two producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries after Saudi Arabia. It also has partial control of the narrow Straits of Hormuz, a key route for most of the crude oil shipped from the Persian Gulf nations to world markets.
Asefi's comments to reporters effectively mean the Russian proposal is dead after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran to the UN Security Council last week.
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