Global General
Iran defies UN, plans 10 uranium sites
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-30 09:49
|
 Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets people outside the presidential palace in La Paz on November 24, 2009. [Agencies] |
Analysts were sceptical whether sanctions-bound Iran, which has problems obtaining materials and components abroad, would be able to equip and operate 10 new plants.
"They don't have the capacity. They'd like to have it," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants and, if refined much further, provide material for bombs.
Ahmadinejad said the government last week studied the issue of producing nuclear fuel enriched to 20 percent, IRIB reported, compared with the level of 3.5 percent it has now. A nuclear bomb would require an enrichment level of over 80 percent.
ISNA news agency gave a different version, saying the issue would be discussed by the government this week.
Estimates vary, but proliferation experts say 1,000-1,700 kg of low-enriched uranium, if converted into high-enriched uranium, would be enough to make a bomb.
Western powers backed a UN-drafted nuclear fuel deal in October that was designed to allay international concern about Iran's atomic activities, but Tehran declined it.
Earlier on Sunday, Iranian lawmakers urged the government to prepare a plan to reduce cooperation with the IAEA over its rebuke.
"Because of world powers' hasty behaviour, the government should submit its plan over reducing Iran's cooperation level with the agency," MPs said in a statement.
Parliament can oblige the government to change the level of cooperation with the IAEA, as it did in 2006 after the agency in Vienna voted to report Iran to the UN Security Council.
