"TEHRAN, Feb. 13 — Iran announced Monday that it had postponed talks on letting Russia enrich its uranium, a proposal that Russia had offered as a way to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran also signaled that it was resuming the enrichment of uranium at one of its main nuclear sites, according to diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

The enrichment move, while not unexpected, intensifies Iran's confrontation with the West over its nuclear ambitions, two weeks after the agency's 35-nation board voted to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council. Iran's hardening stance seemed to close off some options for diplomacy.

In Tehran, a government spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, said during a weekly news conference that the Russian talks had been postponed because of the "new situation."

The talks were to resume Thursday on a proposal by Moscow to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia up to low level to allay international concerns that Iran might try to make a nuclear bomb. The plan was supported by the United States, Europe and China."


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/international/middleeast/14iran.html?ex=1297573200&en=4a88a1f0f2c0624f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&