Posted: 6/10/2006 7:57:30 AM EDT
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from: http://www.dispatch.co.za/2006/06/10/Foreign/bid.html Iran steps up nuke bids President stresses nation’s right to produce its own nuclear fuel AN Iranian official yesterday confirmed that the country had stepped up its nuclear activities, following a report from the UN atomic agency that said Iran had accelerated uranium enrichment. “Iran has started another stage of injecting hexafluoride gas into centrifuge machines,” the student news agency ISNA quoted an unnamed official as saying. “Iran is also pursuing a plan to have a 3000-centrifuge cascade by the end of the current year (March 2007),” he noted, adding that all the material used in uranium enrichment facilities had been produced domestically. A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran had accelerated uranium enrichment on June 6, the same day world powers asked it to halt the work and open talks to guarantee it will not make nuclear weapons. On that Tuesday, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited Tehran to present a package of benefits aimed at enticing Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium makes nuclear reactor fuel, and in a highly refined form can produce atom bomb material. “Iran is continuing its installation work on other 164-machine cascades,” said the report from the IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei. Iran built the cascade as a pilot plant for what it hopes will eventually be an industrial plant of more than 50000 centrifuges, used to refine the uranium 235 isotope. Iran started last August to make feedstock uranium hexafluoride gas, which it then fed into centrifuges in February this year. It produced enriched uranium in April. The quality of enriched uranium being produced in April was appropriate for nuclear reactor fuel and was not the highly-enriched variety needed to make weapons. A senior Iranian cleric yesterday rejected Western proposals on its nuclear programme. “The West can keep this proposal package for itself because it is no use for Iran and the Iranian nation,” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said at the Friday prayer ceremony in the Tehran university. His remarks were approved by thousands of worshippers who shouted the standard slogan of “Nuclear technology is our undeniable right.” “Yes, of course this is your right and you will eventually get this right,” said Jannati, who is head of the powerful senate-like Guardian Council. “History has taught us a lesson: whenever we have resisted, we have won, whenever we have not, we have lost. We have to learn from this historic lesson and keep resisting,” said the Ayatollah, who is one of the main supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Jannati said that all high-ranking Iranian officials are unanimous “that Iran should not retreat one step from its legitimate right (to pursue nuclear technology)”. “The West must eventually accept that we will have a uranium enrichment level of 3,5 to five percent and if there are still any misunderstandings, then we could have talks to remove them,” the Ayatollah said. Uranium enrichment up to five percent can only be used for producing nuclear fuel, which Tehran says is the final aim, but the West fears that Iran might increase the enrichment percentage for making atomic bombs. Tehran has constantly denied these charges. President Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that there would be no concession over Iran’s right to pursue nuclear technology and that he would not allow the West to tell the country what to do and what to decide. “The West would make a grave mistake in believing that the Iranian nation would negotiate about its destiny because Iran will not retreat one iota from its undeniable rights to pursue peaceful nuclear technology,” Ahmadinejad said. — Sapa-AFP-DPA |
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GW said yesterday that Iran has weeks, not months, to respond to the proposal. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said he won't give up enrichment. This will definitely go to the Security Council and if Russia and China-or both-balk, then it'll be up to us to wipe out as much as we can. GW is not screwing around here, and the stepped-up activity by Iran proves without a doubt that it's for WMD's and nothing else. HH |
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ab9_sQJ717P8&refer=top_world_news "Thomas Fingar, deputy U.S. director of national intelligence, said on April 13 that Iran is ``some years away'' from developing a nuclear bomb. U.S. intelligence officials have said Iranian scientists aren't close to installing and operating the 54,000 centrifuges that would be necessary to build a weapon. " |
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