Iran succeeds in enriching uranium 20 percent: Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN/VIENNA - Iran has succeeded in producing its first batch of uranium enriched to 20 percent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday.

“I herewith tell you that we have succeeded in producing the first batch of the 20-percent uranium enrichment at the Natanz site and have delivered it to our scientists,” Ahmadinejad said at a Tehran ceremony marking the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran began the process of enriching uranium from 3.5 percent to 20 percent Tuesday in the presence of IAEA inspectors, defying UN Security Council demands to halt its nuclear programme. The higher-enriched uranium is to be turned into fuel rods for a medical reactor in Tehran.

However, Iran initiated the first steps of this process already Monday evening, before the inspectors arrived and before they had time to set up a monitoring regime for the site, according to an IAEA report obtained by DPA.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano made clear in the report that his organization had requested no such work to be done until his experts arrived and had time to “adjust its existing safeguards procedures at that facility,” in accordance with Iran’s binding inspection contract with the IAEA.

The nuclear agency has not yet confirmed that enrichment has taken place.

“Some 800,000 patients are dependent on the Tehran medical reactor, and we cannot wait for political agreements, and we have told you (the world powers) several times that if you agree with the deal, fine; if not, then we have to do the higher enrichment by

ourselves,” Ahmadinejad said.

Iran said earlier that it would run out of fuel for the reactor next year.

However, the IAEA report said that the production line consisted of a small number of centrifuges. “It will take them a very long time to make fuel,” a Western diplomat commented in Vienna.

Despite Iran’s activities at Natanz, Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran would still be ready go ahead with a plan brokered in October by the IAEA, under which it would swap its low-enriched uranium (LEU) for fuel made in Russia and France.

“We have no problems with exporting our LEU of 3.5 percent as we have the know-how, can produce it again anytime we want and in the near future even three times more than the current production,” Ahmadinejad said.

Moscow has questioned Iran’s intentions after this week’s developments, and the Kremlin said Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to fly to Russia next week for talks which will include Iran’s nuclear programme.

The IAEA has argued that exporting the uranium was a confidence-building measure as it would reduce the amount left in Iran necessary to make a nuclear weapon, an assertion Ahmadinejad rejected.

“I do not know whether the leaders of the US, Britain and Germany are (technically) illiterate or just act so,” Ahmadinejad said. “Our whole production line is under the strict supervision of the IAEA,” he claimed. “How can we build an atomic bomb in front of IAEA inspectors and cameras?”

He said that although Iran had the know-how to enrich uranium even to 80 percent, which is sufficient to make an atomic bomb, it had never been the country’s intention and was not within the doctrine of the Islamic Republic.

“Unlike you, we are no liars,” he charged, referring to the world powers.

Western intelligence services as well as former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei are of the view that Tehran aims to at least acquire the technical capability for building nuclear weapons, as a form of strategic asset.