LAUSANNE, Switzerland — American officials said on Monday that they were still negotiating with their Iranian counterparts on one of the main issues remaining in their efforts to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program— how to dispose of Iran’s big nuclear stockpile — and that shipping the atomic fuel out of the country was still a possibility.


The American officials were pushing back against public statements made on Sunday by Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, that seemed to rule out an accord under which uranium would be sent abroad.


Those comments represented an apparent change in position by the Iranian negotiators, who had been reported as having tentatively agreed for months to send a large portion of their uranium stockpile to Russia for reprocessing into a form that would be extremely difficult to use in a nuclear bomb.



The New York Times reported on the statements made by Mr. Araqchi to a number of Iranian and international news organizations, including Agence France-Presse.
American officials did not criticize Mr. Araqchi’s public comments, which he made to several news organizations. But they insisted that the issue had never been decided in the closed-door talks, even tentatively. That suggests the question may not be resolved until a final accord is struck in June.




“Contrary to the report in The New York Times, the issue of how Iran’s stockpile would be disposed of had not yet been decided in the negotiating room, even tentatively,” a senior State Department official said in a statement that was emailed to reporters.

“There is no question that disposition of their stockpile is essential to ensuring the program is exclusively peaceful,” added the official, who declined to be identified under the department’s protocol for briefing reporters. “There are viable options that have been under discussion for months, including shipping out the stockpile, but resolution is still being discussed. The metric is ensuring the amount of material remaining as enriched material will only be what is necessary for a working stock and no more.”


The proposal to ship Iran’s uranium out of the country was seen as giving the talks an important lift when it was reported last year.


Under the plan, the fuel would be shipped to Russia and converted there into specialized fuel rods for use at Iran’s commercial reactor at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Converting the material into fuel rods would make it extremely difficult for Iran to use the uranium to build a nuclear weapon.


It is unclear how the emerging deal might need to be modified if the accord does not provide for the uranium to be shipped abroad. Some Western officials have said that the issue could be resolved by blending the fuel into a more diluted form and subjecting it to strict monitoring measures.


But such an arrangement might affect other important components of the possible deal, such as the number of centrifuges Iran could retain and operate, the pace at which sanctions could be removed, and the kind of monitoring that would be required.


Negotiators are trying to agree on the parameters of a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program by Tuesday. A comprehensive accord, with technical annexes, is to be finished by the end of June.


With the deadline a day away, Secretary of State John Kerry and his other negotiating partners met Monday morning with Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister.


By The New York Times