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WASHINGTON, Aug 26, 2010 (IPS) - President Barack Obama's refusal in a White House briefing earlier this month to announce a "red line" in regard to the Iran nuclear programme represented another in a series of rebuffs of pressure from Defence Secretary Robert Gates for statement that the United States will not accept its existing stocks of low enriched uranium.

The Obama rebuff climaxed a months-long internal debate between Obama and Gates over the "breakout capability" issue which surfaced in the news media last April. 

Gates has been arguing that Iran could turn its existing stock of low enriched uranium (LEU) into a capability to build a nuclear weapon secretly by using covert enrichment sites and undeclared sources of uranium. 

That Gates argument implies that the only way to prevent Iran having enough bomb-grade uranium for nuclear weapons is to insist that Iran must give up most of its existing stock of LEU, which could be converted into enough bomb-grade uranium for one bomb. 

But Obama has publicly rejected the idea that Iran's existing stock of LEU represents a breakout capability on more than one occasion. He has stated that Iran would have to make an overt move to have a "breakout capability" that would signal its intention to have a nuclear weapon. 

Obama's most recent rebuff of the Gates position came in the briefing he gave to a select group of ... >>>