The head of the parliament's foreign policy commission said Sunday that Iran would halt its 20-per-cent uranium enrichment programme if the uranium swap were implemented, dpa reported.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi told official news agency IRNA that Iran would not insist on continuing the 20-per-cent enrichment if fuel for the Tehran medical reactor were provided from abroad.
Officials have recently made contradictory remarks regarding the enrichment programme but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has noted that stopping it would be economically and politically advantageous.
According to a plan brokered in October by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran's low-enriched uranium was to be exported to Russia for further enrichment, and then to France for processing into fuel for the medical reactor.
That plan fell through, and Iran started enriching its uranium to 20 per cent in February. Tehran claims to have already produced 17 kilograms of the 20-per-cent uranium.
In May, Turkey and Brazil negotiated a deal with Iran to store 1.2 tons of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey until could be swapped for 120 kilograms of reactor fuel.
But the world powers baulked at authorising that agreement, and issued a fourth sanctions resolution against Iran through the United Nations Security Council.
Boroujerdi said Iran was willing to renegotiate the dispute on the basis of the Tehran agreement with Turkey and Brazil. But he said that would require halting the new sanctions.
Ahmadinejad said last week that Iran would be ready for nuclear talks with world powers in late August, but asked that Turkey and Brazil be included with the five permanent UN Security Council member states plus Germany.