Iran offers to halt enrichment, if West provides uranium

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offers stopping his country's production of low enriched uranium if the West provided Tehran with the nuclear material.Iran has offered to stop its production of low enriched uranium, provided the West gives it the nuclear material, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview published in Thursday's New York Times."If they give us the 20 percent enriched uranium this very week, we will cease the domestic enrichment of uranium of up to 20 percent this very week. We only want the 20 percent enrichment for our domestic consumption," Ahmadinejad said."If they give it to us according to international law, according to IAEA laws, without preconditions, we will cease domestic enrichment," he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.He reiterated his stance that Tehran is only pursuing a nuclear program for domestic purposes, and not for the production of atomic weapons as the West has alleged."This is not something we wish to produce and sell on the open market," the Iranian leader said."Twenty percent enriched uranium, as you know, is not useful for much of anything other than the production of cancer treatment medication. It is not useful for a power plant."Ahmadinejad, currently in New York where he is scheduled later Thursday to address the United Nations General Assembly, told the Times that the deal would spare Iran the trouble and expense of processing the enriched uranium itself."If they were willing to sell us the 20 percent enriched uranium we would have preferred to buy it. It would have been far less expensive," he said."It's as though you wish to purchase a vehicle for yourself. No one is willing to sell it to you, then you must set up your own production line to produce your own vehicle."The UN Security Council in the past has slapped four rounds of sanctions on Iran to get it to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which can produce fuel for a reactor but which it says -- contrary to Ahmadinejad's assertion -- also can be used in a nuclear warhead.