Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran will decide 'soon' on a UN-drafted plan to send enriched uranium abroad to be converted into nuclear fuel rods. (Vahid Salemi/Associated Press)Iran's foreign minister said Monday that Tehran might agree to send some of its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment, the first sign his government was considering a proposed UN-drafted plan.

"To supply fuel, we may purchase it like in the past, or we may deliver part of (the low-enriched uranium) fuel which we currently don't need," Manouchehr Mottaki said.

"A decision will be made in the next few days."

Mottaki's comments are the first indication Iran may agree at least in part to a plan drafted by the International Atomic Energy Agency last week calling for the Islamic republic to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia.

Under the plan, Russia would enrich the uranium further and send it to France to be turned into fuel rods and then sent back to Iran for use in its reactors.

The international community has been pushing for the export of most of Iran's low-enriched uranium in an effort to take away most of the material that could potentially be used to make a nuclear weapon.

Iran has claimed its nuclear facilities are for energy purposes, and has previously balked at shipping its low-enriched uranium abroad, saying it needs it for nuclear fuel.

Iran to continue enrichment

Mottaki's comments reveal Iran is considering working with the international community, but he insisted that the country would continue to enrich its own uranium.

"Iran's legal peaceful nuclear activities will continue and this issue [Iran's enrichment program] has nothing to do with supplying fuel for the Tehran reactor," he said.

A worker is shown at the Fuel Manufacturing plant at Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, 440 kilometres south of Tehran, on April 9. It's one of two facilities the international community is concerned could be used to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. (Caren Firouz/Reuters)

Other political leaders in Iran have been harsher in their assessment of the draft proposal. Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani last week accused the West of trying to cheat the country, raising concerns the deal would be rejected.

On Monday, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee, told Iran's Arabic-language al Alam television the government should send its uranium abroad gradually and in several phases, a condition not likely to please the United States and its allies.

Iran is under three sets of sanctions for continuing its nuclear program and failing to allow UN inspectors to investigate its facilities. Western powers had discussed a fourth set of sanctions after it was revealed in September that the country had begun work on a second uranium enrichment plant.

Iran agreed during talks in Geneva earlier this month to allow UN inspectors to visit the plant, a concession that negotiators saw as a sign that further talks might be productive.

The delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Iran over the weekend and expected on Monday to complete a second day of inspections inside Iran's second uranium-enrichment facility, carved into a mountainside near Qom.

The major issue of the talks last week was how much of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium it is willing to turn over as part of the agreement. The draft plan, agreed to after three days of talks between Iran and the U.S., Russia and France in Vienna, called for as much as 1,100 kilograms, or 70 per cent of Iran's declared stockpile.

The amount is significant because 1,000 kilograms is the commonly accepted threshold of low-enriched uranium needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear warhead.

Based on the Iranian stockpile, the U.S. has estimated Tehran could produce a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015.

With files from The Associated Press