Obama May Cede Iran's Nuclear Rights

From the April 10, 2009 Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KD10Ak03.html

So, apparently the Obama Administration's way to confront Iran's nuclear ambitions and promote nuclear non-proliferation is to...encourage Kazakhstan, the world's #2 holder of uranium reserves after Australia, to create an international uranium fuel bank. The theory, as I read it, is that Iran would stop sensitive internal uranium enrichment if it could obtain the uranium globally and peacefully for use in nuclear power plants. I need to do some more research on whether this uranium from a fuel bank can't be used for weaponization.

The article's author, a former Indian diplomat, editorializes (there's a lot of this with The Asia Times) that Kazakhstan President Nurusultan Nazarbayev (who according to the author, supposedly could've been the Soviet Union's PM if not for its collapse) is a shrewd veteran politician who's been trying to build support for this global uranium bank for a while. Apparently, the Japanese are big supporters of this idea as it is the world's 3rd largest importer of uranium, after the US and France, and it gives them a stable source. China and Russian are understandably not pleased with improved US-Japanese-Central Asian relations. Companies from both nations had been trying to persuade Kazakhstan to grant exclusive contracts, thereby increasing their influence on yet another Central Asian energy-rich nation.