Iranian Request for Uranium Brings Talks With France to a Halt

PARIS — Talks on a long-running financial dispute between France and Iran failed this week after Iran sought supplies of enriched uranium as the price of agreement, French newspapers reported Friday.

France’s Foreign Ministry declined all comment on the reports in the influential daily Le Monde and the financial daily Les Echos, which said Paris rejected the last-minute request.

They said Iran, which has no functioning nuclear power stations, had no obvious civilian need for such material.

The surprise request prevented Foreign Minister Roland Dumas from signing an accord Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, who returned home, leaving the financial dispute still open, the newspapers said.

“We will not be making any comment at all on this affair . . . it’s too delicate,” a government official said.

Velayati was in Paris to negotiate the final points of an agreement on repayment of a $1-billion loan to France by the late shah, and compensation claimed by French firms for contracts canceled after Iran’s revolution in 1979.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Bernard told journalists Thursday that only one problem--”a grain of sand”--remained to be resolved.

He declined to say what the problem was but the two French newspapers said Velayati at the last moment asked for enriched uranium.

“This situation presents a political problem . . . at a time when France has just announced its intention to sign the international nuclear nonproliferation treaty,” Les Echos said.

Velayati said Wednesday that there were “technical problems” in the way of a final accord, but no major obstacles.

Also Wednesday, President Francois Mitterrand accepted an invitation from President Hashemi Rafsanjani to visit Iran before the end of the year.