EU may offer Iran light-water reactor

UNITED NATIONS – The European Union is considering offering Iran a light-water reactor as part of an incentive package to persuade the country to halt uranium enrichment, European diplomats said Tuesday.

U.S. officials reacted coolly, and Iran’s foreign minister said the country would not give up its right to enrichment at any price.

Last year, Iran rejected a European offer of the possibility of a light-water reactor along with trade and financial incentives. The new proposal is more explicit in its offer to help build and finance the reactor, a European diplomat said.

Austrian Foreign Minister Audrey Plassnik said the new plan would also provide the enriched uranium to fuel the reactor and remove the plutonium waste so it could not be diverted for weapons.

The EU proposal echoes an offer the United States made to North Korea in the 1990s to provide two light-water reactors if Pyongyang gave up a plutonium-producing heavy-water research reactor and complied with U.N. inspections. The deal collapsed in 2002 after the United States asserted that North Korea had forged ahead with a secret parallel weapons program based on highly enriched uranium.

“The intention is not to push Iran into further isolation but to find a way to bring Iran back to a negotiating track,” Plassnik said Monday after a meeting of EU foreign ministers. “But we will also look at measures to be taken should Iran continue to reject this course.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the ambassadors of Britain, France and Germany on Monday that enrichment would not be halted, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The European officials will meet with their counterparts from the United States, Russia and China on Friday to work out a package of carrots and sticks in an attempt to compel Tehran to cease enrichment, which can produce reactor fuel or bomb material.

U.S. officials have made clear that they think the sticks will be more effective. Last week at a foreign ministers’ meeting at the U.N., Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed for the quick adoption of a resolution one step short of sanctions to heighten pressure on Iran.

Russia and China balked, and European ministers asked for a week’s grace to put together a combination of rewards and penalties before moving toward the resolution, which would legally compel Iran to comply or face future penalties.