Iran Nuclear Swap Deal a 'Trickery': Israeli PM

Iran's nuclear fuel deal with Turkey and Brazil is a form of "trickery" by Tehran to ward off international sanctions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

"The pact concluded by Iran is a trickery which will not prevent it from getting enriched uranium," the prime minister said during a parliamentary debate, www.channelnewsasia.com reported his as saying. "The aim of this trickery is to avoid international sanctions."

Iran on Monday officially notified the UN nuclear watchdog of the nuclear fuel swap deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil, under which it would ship some low enriched uranium to Turkey in return for higher grade fuel for a research reactor.

Later US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran's letter of notification to the U.N. atomic watchdog on a nuclear-fuel swap deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil has "a number of deficiencies."

"We discussed at some length the shortcomings of the recent proposal put forward by Iran in its letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Clinton told reporters following two days of strategic talks with China. "There are a number of deficiencies that do not answer the concerns of the international community."

"The agreement ... between Iran, Brazil and Turkey only occurred because the Security Council was on the brink of publicly releasing the text of the resolution we've been negotiating for many weeks," Clinton said.

The United States, France and Russia had themselves offered to supply fuel to a research reactor in Tehran under a UN-brokered deal last October but Iran stalled on that agreement, insisting on a simultaneous swap on its own soil. Western governments have been dismissive of the new deal, which they have said fails to address international concerns about Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is aimed at peaceful power production, but major powers accuse it of seeking to build a nuclear weapon.