Brazil's president seeks nuclear compromise with Iranian leaders, as US pushes for sanctions
ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
4:52 a.m. EDT, May 16, 2010
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Brazil's president met with Iranian leaders Sunday to try to broker a compromise in the international standoff over Tehran's nuclear program, even as the U.S. says new sanctions are the only way to force Iran's cooperation.
Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is trying to use Brazil's friendly relations with Iran to show it can be a fair, neutral broker in the escalating dispute. Since evidence of a clandestine Iranian nuclear program first emerged in 2003, negotiations with world powers and visits by U.N. inspectors have failed to persuade the U.S. and its allies that Iran is not pursuing a weapons capability.
"It's more difficult for someone who has nuclear weapons to ask someone not to develop nuclear weapons," Silva said in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV on Saturday. "It's easier for someone who does not carry nuclear weapons, like myself, to ask for that."
The Brazilian president is reportedly trying to revive a U.N.-backed proposal in which Iran would ship its stockpile of enriched uranium abroad to be processed further and returned as fuel rods for a medical research reactor.
Silva began his visit by meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the afternoon, he was to meet Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-ml-iran-brazil,0,7917688.story