MOSCOW - Russia has agreed to proposals by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to help reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

We agree with these proposals and we are counting on not only Iran, but all the other participants of the negotiations, to confirm their readiness to implement the proposed scheme, Lavrov told reporters.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog on Wednesday presented a draft deal to Iran and three world powers for approval within two days to reduce Tehran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, seen by the West as a nuclear weapons risk.

Iran has so far declined to say if it would endorse the plan, which Western diplomats said would require Tehran to send 1.2 tons of its known 1.5-tonne reserve of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France by the end of the year.

The material would be converted into fuel for a nuclear medicine facility in Tehran.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney, writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Amie Ferris-Rotman, editing by Jon Boyle)

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