Iran officially confirms it has stepped up uranium enrichment
By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service
Iran officially confirmed it has stepped up uranium enrichment by injecting gas into a second network of centrifuges, a state-run newspaper reported Saturday.
The gas injection marked Iran's first known uranium enrichment since February. The process can either yield nuclear fuel or material for a warhead, but doesn't represent a major technological breakthrough and is unlikely to bring Iran within grasp of a weapon.
However, Tehran's announcement signaled the Islamic Republic's resolve to expand its atomic program at a time of divisions within the UN Security Council over a punishment for Iran's defiance.
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"We have exploited products from both cascades," the Iran Daily newspaper quoted Mohammad Ghannad, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, as saying Saturday. "The second one was installed in the past two week."
Ghannad said both cascades were enriching uranium by 3 to 5 percent, enough for industrial use but not for weapons. "This experience will help Iranian engineers get closer to industrial uranium enrichment," he said.
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been aware of the second cascade for the past five months, Ghannad said. "IAEA inspectors visited the cascades in Natanz last week," he said.
Meanwhile, United States President George W. Bush said the international community must double its efforts to deter Iran from pursuing its nuclear program, following reports that Iran had doubled its uranium enrichment facilities.
"We must double our effort to work with the international community to persuade the Iranians that there is only isolation from the world if they continue working forward on such a program," Bush said in a news conference on Friday.
"Whether they've doubled it [uranium enrichment capacity] or not, the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable? We're working with the United Nations to send a common message," he said.
A semiofficial Iranian news agency reported Friday that Iran has injected gas into a second network and successfully enriched uranium. Enriched uranium can be used in nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons.
The news came as world powers worked on a draft resolution in the UN Security Council that would impose limited sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to cease enrichment - a process that can produce material for nuclear power reactors, or weapons.
The Iranian Students News Agency quoted an anonymous official on Friday as saying that Iran has begun injecting gas into a second cascade of centrifuges and had obtained successful enrichment results.
"We are injecting gas into the second cascade, which we installed two weeks ago," the anonymous official was quoted by ISNA as saying. "We have already exploited the product of the second cascade," said the official, implying that engineers had succeeded in the enrichment process.
Iranian authorities are believed to leak information to ISNA which they want published but consider too sensitive for the official media.
France's Foreign Ministry on Friday called Iran's expansion of its nuclear program to a second network of uranium-enrichment centrifuges a negative sign that should be taken to account at UN talks over possible sanctions.
French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, expressed support for sanctions against Iran, but insisted that they be temporary and reversible.
Russia's defense minister said Friday that the doubling of Iran's capacity to enrich uranium was not a cause for concern.
"I don't share concerns on this account," Sergey Ivanov told reporters, adding that a second network of centrifuges launched by Iran was under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "It's premature to talk of uranium enrichment or of military uranium."
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow was opposed to the UN draft resolution on Iran.
Russia and China, both veto-wielding Security Council members with strong
commercial ties to Tehran, have been consistently reluctant to support
sanctions. A key concern for Moscow is the future of its $1 billion contract to build Iran's first nuclear power station.
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