ROME AND BEIRUT — In a possible move to deflect attention from Iran’s political woes, President Mahmoud Ahma dinejad on Sunday ordered the nation’s atomic-energy agency to begin enriching uranium from 3.5 percent to 20 percent purity to serve as fuel for a Teh ran medical reactor.
“Please start 20 percent enrichment, though we are still in talks about a fuel exchange,” he told Iran’s atomic-energy chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, during a live television appearance. “We are ready for exchange. But if the Western governments don’t like an exchange, we go our own way.”
The West accuses Iran of dragging its feet in responding to a U.N.-backed proposal to exchange the bulk of its enriched uranium supply for reactor fuel plates for the Tehran medical reactor.
Tehran accuses the West of refusing to negotiate in good faith or to address Iranian concerns about details of the deal.
With talks faltering, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Rome on Sunday that Washington and its allies would consider new sanctions to pressure Iran into curbing aspects of its nuclear program.
“If the international community will stand together and bring pressure to bear on the Iranian government, I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work,” Gates said at a news conference in Italy where he has been meeting with top-level officials.
But any move by Iran to produce a 20 percent-enriched nuclear fuel supply would provoke Western nations and Israel, which suspect that Tehran ultimately plans to build nuclear bombs, which require highly enriched uranium.
Ahmadinejad’s command was immediately downplayed by Salehi, who described it as an “alert order” meant to spur the West to make a deal with the Islamic Republic.
