Iran nuke offer rejected

Reuters:

The United States and Germany said on Saturday they saw no sign Tehran would make concessions on its nuclear program despite upbeat comments from Iran's foreign minister over prospects for a deal.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he did not believe agreement was near on a proposal to exchange Iran's low-enriched uranium for higher-grade fuel for use in a Tehran reactor making medical isotopes, and suggested it was time for more sanctions on Iran.

An accord on exchanging fuel could mark a major breakthrough in the long-running dispute over Iran's nuclear program, which the West fears could be used to produce an atomic bomb.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Friday he saw good prospects for agreement, but restated two conditions that could be stumbling blocks -- that any fuel exchange must be simultaneous and that Iran would determine quantities involved.

"I don't have the sense that we're close to an agreement," Gates told reporters in Ankara where he met Turkish leaders.

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German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Iran had so far failed to dispel Western skepticism that it was prepared to make meaningful concessions over its nuclear program.

"Our hand is still reaching out toward them. But so far it's reaching out into nothingness," he said at an annual security conference in Munich. "And I've seen nothing since yesterday that makes me want to change that view."

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If Iran was really interested in doing a deal it would have been done by now. What they are really interested in is obfuscating and delaying the day when sanctions are imposed. In doing so they make it more likely that Israel and possibly the US attack their facilities.