Iran will not send its partially enriched uranium abroad to be turned into material for medical research, its foreign minister said Wednesday, rejecting a key plank of a deal designed to ease international fears that Tehran aims to build nuclear weapons.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran might allow its nuclear material to be reprocessed inside Iran, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

The deal hammered out last month with the help of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency aimed to reduce the amount of raw material Iran has to build a nuclear bomb.

Tehran denies that it wants to do so, saying its nuclear program is to produce civilian nuclear energy and do medical work.

An Iranian diplomat said on 21 October, 2009 that “Iran has accepted a draft agreement that calls for some uranium produced in Iran to be sent abroad for further enrichment”.

The draft agreement is “the summary of the discussions that we have had” since Monday, which Soltanieh described as “elaborating on all aspects of this project for fuel for Tehran’s reactor,” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said.

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The chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agencyless optimistic after Tuesday’s meeting on Iran’s nuclear program than he had after Monday’s meetings.

“There is of course the question of confidence building, guarantees. I think and I believe that we are making progress. It is maybe slower than expected but we are moving forward.”

“We still hope to be able to reach an agreement,”  “It is a complex process, as you understand. There is a technical aspect, many technical issues that we have to hammer out,” said Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Delegations from Iran, France, Russia, the United States and the IAEA are meeting in Vienna this week to work out details of a tentative deal reached in early October. That deal calls for low-enriched uranium produced in Iran to be sent abroad for further enrichment and then returned for use in medical research and treatment.

Low-enriched fuel has the potential of being further enriched into weapons-grade material.

According to the plan:

Iran will send its low-enriched uranium to Russia. Russia will then further enrich it, but keep it below weapons-grade, and send it to France.

France will prepare the uranium for use in nuclear reactors by fabricating it into metal rods and send them to Iran.

Iran will then use the rods in its nuclear reactors.

But on Monday, Iran’s state-run media said Tehran had ruled out France as a country from which it would purchase the enriched metal rods.

The French Foreign Ministry refused to comment on the matter until the talks conclude.

CNN News report.