After days of uncertain signals, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hinted Thursday that Iran would accept a United Nations-sponsored plan to send the country’s uranium abroad for processing, saying, “We welcome cooperation on nuclear fuel, power plants and technology, and we are ready to cooperate.”

But it remained unclear whether Iran would insist on shipping the material in installments, which would undercut the intent of the plan: to leave Iran without enough nuclear material to build a weapon for at least a year, time in which the West would work toward an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The uranium would be returned to Iran in the form of fuel rods, usable only in a civilian nuclear facility and not for weapons.

Israeli police officers clashed Sunday with stone-throwing Palestinians at a site sacred to Muslims and Jews, in the latest sign of tension in this volatile city.

The police said that their forces had entered the Temple Mount compound twice after Palestinians hurled rocks at officers patrolling there, and that they dispersed rioters with stun grenades.

The compound sits in contested territory that Israel took from Jordan in the 1967 war.

The Egyptian government said today that its antiquities department had severed ties with the Louvre in Paris because it had refused to return "stolen" artefacts. The Louvre has said it is open to returning the four reliefs from the tomb of the noble Tetaki, though it is awaiting a decision from a committee of experts and final approval from the culture ministry. The ruling means that no archaeological expeditions connected to the Louvre will be allowed to work in Egypt. Among the Supreme Council of Antiquities' other targets is the Rosetta Stone, pictured, which is in the British Museum.