RIYADH, Nov 2: Alarmed by the growing crisis over Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, Saudi Arabia has suggested the setting up of a Gulf consortium in a ‘neutral country’ to take care of uranium requirements of Iran and other countries of the region.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal told the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) the plan could defuse Tehran’s standoff with the West over its nuclear programme.
Outlining the plan in an interview with MEED during Saudi King Abdullah’s visit to London, Prince Saud said the GCC had mooted the proposal to stave off a nuclear arms race in the Gulf.
Arab countries of the Gulf are wary of the Iranian nuclear ambitions, fearing that Iran could be trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Bahrain Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, in an interview with The Times, accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons.
“While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it or the capability for it,” he said.
Under the reported GCC plan, its members -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- would establish a uranium enrichment plant in a neutral country outside the Middle East. The plant would produce nuclear fuel that would then be given to Iran and other Middle East countries, seeking to harness atomic energy.
Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya and Yemen as well as the six GCC states have all said that they want to pursue peaceful nuclear projects. Iran says its nuclear programme is basically to meet its growing energy needs. It intends to produce 6000 MW of additional energy by 2010 through nuclear means.
At the heart of the current problem between Iran and the West is former’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Iran insists that enriched uranium will be used purely as fuel for its nuclear reactor at Buhsher. Prince Saud said that in order to defuse the situation, Saudi Arabia and a consortium of Arab Gulf states had invited Iran to produce enriched uranium jointly in a plant that could be properly monitored by international observers.
“We have proposed a solution, which is to create a consortium for all users of enriched uranium to do it in a collective manner that would distribute (nuclear fuel) according to need,” he said.
“We hope the Iranians will accept this proposal.” He said the proposed plant would be built in a neutral country, like Switzerland. While the offer provides an imaginative solution to the crisis in the Gulf, Iran has so far not responded. Prince Saud said that another conflict in the region, which produces most of the world’s energy, would be a disaster for everyone.
