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Reuters(Reuters) - Western powers said on Tuesday Iran's continued stockpiling of enriched uranium devalued its deal to give up some of its potential nuclear bomb material, signaling Tehran would not evade more sanctions this way.Under the deal agreed with Turkey and Brazil last week, Iran would send 1.2 tons of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey for safekeeping until Tehran received specially processed fuel for its medical isotope reactor around a year later.
But Western critics said the accord, echoing one brokered by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in October involving the same amount of LEU, would still leave Iran with enough material for one bomb, if enriched to high purity, since it is estimated to have almost doubled its LEU reserve with daily enrichment since then.
The United States, France and Russia -- parties to the original deal in principle -- saw it as a way to divest Iran of enough LEU to prevent covert "weaponisation," while giving Iran the means to maintain care for some 850,000 cancer patients.
But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned Iran's gesture, six months after it backed away from the accord, as a "transparent ploy to avoid (U.N.) Security Council action" to pass a fourth Iran sanctions resolution now on the table.
Clinton, speaking after talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing, and French officials said Iran's launch of higher-level enrichment in February seemed to eclipse any fuel swap deal.
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