That would, to some extent, mitigate international concerns over Iran's development of nuclear weapons and weaken the legitimacy of a fresh round of UN Security Council sanctions that is underway.

However, the specifics of the Iran-Turkey accord, due to be submitted to the UN Security Council for review days later, are unclear.

One thing, however, is certain: Iran still exercises sovereignty over the low-enriched uranium transferred to Turkey and thus is still empowered to retrieve them at any time for use for other purposes.

This arrangement has not fundamentally assuaged Western worries about Teheran's possible development of nuclear weapons in future. For the West, the Islamic nation should relinquish any fissile material, should abandon stockpiled nuclear material and then guarantee that it would not produce such material any more.

Obviously, Iran has failed to meet Western demands in its agreement with Turkey. The accord only aims to put a temporary moratorium on Iran's nuclear proliferation and put off such a risk.

At the same time, the accord ensures the Islamic nation can get a supply of 120 kg of uranium enriched to 19.75 percent purity from other countries while not abandoning its own low-enriched uranium.

Over the past year, Iran has stepped up its uranium enrichment activities. The shipment of 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium to Turkey will not change the fact that Teheran still holds some amount of such material and will continue to enrich it.

That, if it occurs, will contravene all previous UN Security Council resolutions and also run counter to the new round of UN sanctions being pushed by the P5+1 countries.

Anyway, Iran's agreement to transfer some of its nuclear material to neighboring Turkey for storage is tantamount to its decision to voluntarily abandon part of its long-insisted sovereignty on its nuclear program.

The move will help ease its long-simmering conflict with the West on the issue. The international society should work together with Iran to grab this rare opportunity in a bid to steer the standoff in a more virtuous direction.

The author is a professor and director of the Center for American Studies

at Fudan University.

(China Daily 05/26/2010 page8)