The deal could ease a standoff over Iran's nuclear program that Western nations and Israel suspect is intended to produce nuclear weapons.

The divergent views in Tehran have emerged in a string of reports in the official press and other media outlets over the last several days.

On Friday, Iran missed a deadline to respond to the proposal, which would allow the country to acquire nuclear fuel for its medical reactor.

Apparently keeping the door open to accepting the proposal, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said yesterday that Iran could either send part of its low-enriched uranium stockpile abroad for specialized processing into fuel or buy the material from foreign suppliers.

"In order to obtain this fuel, we might spend money as in the past or we might present part of the fuel that we have right now, and currently do not need, for further processing," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted him as saying.

Several influential lawmakers, the leading pro-government newspaper, and others have all spoken out against the deal. They say the West is trying to deceive the country and keep the nuclear material in order to sabotage Iran's atomic progress.

"America, Europe and Israel, these American cowboys, old British foxes and Zionist child murderers, want to use this ploy to take Iran's uranium and not give it back," said a column yesterday in the newspaper Kayhan, which often reflects the views of decision-makers within Iran's leadership.

France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the deal was the only way to avoid an Israeli strike against Iran.

Israel "will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us," he told London's Daily Telegraph.

In a remark possibly related to the current negotiations, the deputy head of parliament, a known critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said yesterday that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, was opposed to negotiations with the United States. Ahmadinejad has indicated recently he is open to talks.

"At the present time, the leader and the Supreme National Security Council stress that our strategic policies are not to negotiate with the U.S.," Mohammad Reza Bahonar said, according to the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency.

The mixed messages came as U.N. nuclear inspectors completed a second day of examining a still-unfinished uranium-enrichment lab whose existence was revealed by Iran a month ago.

Iran agreed to the inspections during an unusual meeting with officials from the United States and other world powers early this month in Geneva, Switzerland, where the proposal that Tehran ship uranium to Russia for further enrichment was first raised.

The draft plan was formalized last week after Iran held talks in Vienna, Austria, with the United States, Russia, and France.

In an interview published yesterday, a Russian negotiator nudged Iran to accept the plan. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the daily Vremya Novostei that implementation of the proposal "would allow for a cooling of emotions and a realistic assessment of the situation."

The U.N. plan envisions Iran sending up to 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched to a degree needed for use in the Tehran research reactor.

The deal is attractive to the United States and its allies because it would mean Iran - for a period of time, anyway - would not have enough uranium stocks to build a bomb.

Uranium enriched to low levels is used to fuel a reactor for electricity or used in research reactors. When enriched to levels above 90 percent, uranium can be used to build a bomb.

Pakistan Arrests 11 Iranians at Border

Pakistan said it arrested 11 Iranians yesterday at its border with Iran - days after a deadly suicide attack in Iran that Tehran alleged had links to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Pakistani authorities first

said the 11 were members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard but then identified them only as security officers.

Iran's Press TV carried

what it described as a statement from the guard condemning the arrests,

but saying that the 11

were not its members. The report cited "informed" sources as saying the arrested men were "border guards hunting fuel smugglers [who] accidentally entered Pakistan."

The arrests could add to

the strain between the two nations triggered by the

Oct. 18 attack on the

Iranian side of the border, which killed scores,

including top guard officers.

They came a day after the Pakistani president met Iran's interior minister and vowed to track down the perpetrators of the blast, which Iran blamed on ethnic Baluchi rebels operating from Pakistan.

- Associated Press