ElBaradei suggests Turkey store Iran's uranium

Iran's enriched uranium could be transferred to Turkey until Tehran is supplied with nuclear gas from Russia, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday during a television interview.

Mohammed ElBaradei said that he offered Turkey as a third destination country after Iran refused the West's proposal that the uranium be enriched in Russia. “It should work,” he said.

The UN watchdog head also added that Iran has great faith in Turkey and that the Obama administration would be open to such a proposal, seeing as the United States is comfortable working with Turkey.

He also noted that the idea has yet to be presented to the Turkish government but estimated that Ankara would agree to store the uranium under the IAEA's supervision. He added that Iran is considering whether to agree to his new proposal.

Defusing the crisis

"I am in contact with them every single day,” ElBaradei said. “They said they would like to keep it on our territory, but I said that defeats the whole purpose of defusing the crisis. We need to get the material out to eliminate the perception that you could develop nuclear weapons tomorrow.”

The Turkish ambassador to the UN said that he was unaware of ElBaradei's new plan while a comment on the proposal has yet to be made by the US State Department.

Earlier on Saturday the Iranian head of parliament's national security and foreign policy committee was quoted as saying that Iran is refusing to send its low-enriched uranium abroad for further processing.

"We do not want to give part of our 1,200 kilos of enriched uranium in order to receive fuel of 20%enrichment," Alaeddin Borujerdi told the ISNA news agency.

Following the statements Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Moscow could endorse sanctions on Iran should the talks fail.