Last update - 00:00 15/01/2007
Iran says expansion of uranium enrichment facilities is imminent
By News Agencies
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday the expansion of uranium enrichment facilities at his country's giant underground bunkers at Natanz would take place "very soon, bit by bit."
Earlier on Monday, Tehran said it was planning to install 3,000 atomic centrifuges there and achieve industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel, which the West fears is part of a program to make bombs.
"We are moving toward the production of nuclear fuel, which requires 3,000 centrifuges and more than this figure," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a news conference. "This program is being carried out and moving toward completion."
Meanwhile, Iran has asked Saudi Arabia to help ease tensions between the Islamic Republic and the United States in a letter delivered by Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator to the Saudi King, a Saudi official said on Monday.
The letter, from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, comes at a time of rising tension over Iran's role in Iraq and Tehran's nuclear program.
It also follows growing criticism in Iran of Ahmadinejad's approach of railing against the West which more moderate politicians blame for stoking fears abroad.
Saudi newspapers carried pictures of Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani, who has often visited key U.S. ally and leading Sunni Muslim nation Saudi Arabia over the past year, in what looked like friendly conversation with King Abdullah on Sunday evening.
Moderate conservatives, like Ahmadinejad's rival Larijani, may be gaining a bigger say in Iranian policy-making after the president's supporters were trounced in December elections to municipal councils and a clerical body, Iranian analysts say.
A Saudi official said Iran wanted Saudi leaders to relay a goodwill message to Washington. Iran would like Saudi Arabia to "help bring opinions together" between Iran and the United States, the official said, but gave no more details.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to arrive for talks in Riyadh on Monday and Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter and a bastion of Sunni Islam, shares U.S. worries over Iran's nuclear program and is also angry over Shi'ite Iran's influence in Iraq where sectarian violence is threatening a civil war.
U.S. President George W. Bush this month vowed action to stop what he said was Iran's role in fomenting violence in Iraq.