U.S. rebuffs Russia's nuclear plan for Tehran

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From combined dispatches

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Washington yesterday hoping to sell a proposed compromise on Iran's nuclear program that would permit Tehran to process small amounts of uranium on its own territory.

U.S. officials responded negatively to the idea even before Mr. Lavrov had a chance to present it at a dinner meeting last night with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The Russian minister meets President Bush at the White House today.

However, the scheme produced some optimism at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of directors in Vienna, Austria, where IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he saw prospects for a solution to the Iran confrontation within a week.

Diplomats in Vienna told Agence France-Presse that the key elements of the Russian plan involve:

• Iran suspending for a short time all enrichment activities, including small-scale research it began in February.

• Iran agreeing to ratify the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for wider inspections by the IAEA.

• Iran agreeing to a long-term suspension of industrial-level enrichment activities and having uranium enriched instead in Russia, where it would not acquire the technology that is considered a "break-out capacity" for making atom bombs.

• Having the IAEA determine what would be a safe, non-proliferation level of small-scale enrichment -- that is, how many centrifuge machines could be used.

The confidential proposal was thought to account for yesterday's upbeat assessment by Mr. ElBaradei, who said he was "still very much hopeful that in the next week, an agreement could be reached" that would avoid having Iran's program brought before the U.N. Security Council.