US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has dismissed Iranian claims that it is close to a deal which would see Tehran sending some of its uranium sent overseas for enrichment, as the UN atomic chief said Tehran presented no new proposals at talks in Germany.
The comments on Saturday come against a backdrop of Western powers' growing impatience with Iran for failing to respond clearly to a proposal for sending some of its uranium abroad for enrichment, amid claims Tehran may be trying to build a nuclear bomb.
"I don't have the sense we are close to an agreement," Gates said in Ankara, a day after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran was "serious" about enriching uranium abroad and that a deal was near.
"If Iran has decided to accept the proposal of the P5-plus-one, they should do that to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)," he told reporters, referring to the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany.
IAEA: Nothing new at the table
But IAEA director general Yukiya Amano, who met with Mottaki on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, said the Iranians brought nothing new to the talks.
"Our meeting covered a variety of areas. That included of course in Iran and the Tehran research reactor. We had a very interesting discussion.... There was not a new proposal. We exchanged views," Amano told reporters.
"Dialogue is continuing and should be accelerated, that is the point," he added.
Mottaki cast the talks with the UN nuclear watchdog in a positive light, calling it a "very good meeting".
"We discussed and exchanged views about a wide range of issues... We also exchanged views about the proposal that is on the table. I tried to explain the views of the Islamic republic of Iran for the director general," Mottaki said.
Deal would see uranium shipped to France and Russia
Iran appeared to reject in October a deal proposed by the IAEA for Iran to export low-enriched uranium to France and Russia to be further purified into fuel for a research reactor in Tehran.
Enrichment outside of Iran is a central plank of a UN-brokered deal Western powers are pushing for out of fears that unsupervised enrichment could feed a covert nuclear weapons program.
Enriched uranium produces fuel for a nuclear reactor but the process can also be used to make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is strictly for civilian purposes.
Mottaki earlier told the conference that "with regard to discussions with the different parties, I personally believe that we have created conducive ground for such an exchange in the not very distant future."
He added that Iran "has shown it is serious about doing this, and we have shown it at the highest level," referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's assertion this week that Tehran would have "no problem" with the proposal.
West suspects delaying tactic
However, US and EU officials suspect the Iranian overture could be a delaying tactic to avert a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions against the regime.
EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, also at the Munich conference, said Iran needed to respond directly to the UN atomic agency to "build badly needed confidence".
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country along with fellow Security Council member China is seen as less keen on more sanctions, also urged Iran to work through the UN watchdog.
"What we want from Iran is to verify very specific questions, raised time and again by the IAEA a long time ago, it is not a difficult thing to do," he said in Munich.
Back in October Iran agreed in principle to the uranium enrichment offer but later appeared to reject it, saying it preferred a gradual swap of low-enriched uranium for fuel - preferably on Iranian soil.
Tehran had given the West until January 31 to respond to its counter-proposals, and Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani on Saturday again insisted that Western powers were trying to dupe Iran.
"They know this is a political swindle and that they are trying to ensure Iran's enriched uranium" is removed from the Islamic republic, Larijani was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
Gates said that any discussion of "some kind of other deal on the research reactor" would have to take place within the formal setting of the Vienna-based IAEA.
He added that Iran, if serious, should not waste time in accepting the proposal.
Iran has "done nothing to reassure the international community," Gates said, adding that "various nations need to think about whether it's time for a different tack."
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