Reuters: Iran will announce its final decision later on Sunday on an EU proposal that it freeze sensitive nuclear work in
return for avoiding referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, local news agencies reported.
Reuters
TEHRAN – Iran will announce its final decision later on Sunday on an EU proposal that it freeze sensitive nuclear work in return for avoiding referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, local news agencies reported.
The semi-official Mehr and ISNA news agencies, citing informed Iranian sources, said Hassan Rohani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, would deliver Iran’s answer to the ambassadors of Britain, Germany and France.
The reports gave no indication of what Iran’s response to the European Union proposal would be.
Diplomats say Iran must formally announce that it has decided to suspend potentially weapons-related nuclear activities, such as uranium enrichment, on Sunday if the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, is to include this in a key report on Iran’s nuclear program due to be released on Monday.
Iran, which denies U.S. accusations that it is secretly building nuclear weapons, had been expected to announce the suspension last week.
But negotiations ran into problems when Iran objected to the scope of the suspension the EU was demanding, diplomats say. The EU wants Iran to freeze all nuclear fuel cycle work but Iran wants to continue the early stages of uranium conversion.
The EU has warned Iran that it will back U.S. calls for Iran’s case to be sent to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if the suspension is not in place before the Nov. 25 board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.