Vienna - Iran on Friday said it would reply only next week to a plan for processing Iran's nuclear fuel abroad, breaking a deadline and throwing into doubt the deal designed to defuse the standoff over the country's nuclear programme. "Iran informed the Director General today that it is considering the proposal in depth and in a favourable light, but it needs time until the middle of next week to provide a response," the IAEA said in a statement, referring to its Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, who had set a Friday deadline for replying to his proposed deal.
Earlier Friday, the US, Russia and France said they would join the agreement that foresees shipping Iranian enriched uranium to Russia for further processing, to be eventually used in a medical-purpose reactor in Tehran.
"The Director General hopes that Iran's response will equally be positive, since approval of this agreement will signal a new era of cooperation," the IAEA said.
In addition to ignoring the deadline, an anoymous Iranian source told Iranian state television that his country might not agree to ship its enriched uranium abroad at all, but would rather like to buy it from a foreign country.
Iran's delayed response is also likely to cast a shadow on the next round of Iran's nuclear talks among the permanent five members of the UN Security Council Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, plus Germany, that were scheduled in Geneva next week. This group is known as the P5 plus 1.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said earlier in Beirut that such negative signals from Tehran would be "unfortunate for pursuing the contacts at the level of the P5 plus 1 in Geneva."
The draft agreement, drawn up in two-and-a-half days of talks in Vienna earlier this week, was based on a general understanding reached between Iran and the six world powers in Geneva on October 1.
A French Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed Thursday that his country stood ready to take the material processed in Russia and turn it into actual fuel elements for Iran.
France is one of the few countries with this technical capability.
The countries involved have described the possible agreement as an important confidence-building measure, because it would reduce the likelihood of Iran using the uranium for nuclear weapons. Iran denies it has any such military intentions.
The material that Western countries would like Iran to ship out by the end of the year constitutes most of the Islamic state's stock of low-enriched uranium.
Once the uranium has been turned into fuel elements for the Tehran reactor, it would be very difficult to use it in atom bombs.
In Israel, opposition leader Tzipi Livni warned earlier Friday that "Iran should know that all options are on the table,"Israel Army Radio quoted her as saying.
She said planned enrichment agreement "will blow up in our face and in the face of the international community."
"The world understands that it cannot afford a nuclear Iran, but to my regret there is a gap between this understanding and actions on the ground," said Livni, the former foreign minister of the centrist Kadima party.
