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Last update - 00:00 04/04/2008
Poll: Nearly half of Israeli Arabs say let Iran develop nukes
By Fadi Eyadat, Haaretz Correspondent and The Associated Press
Tags: Sanctions, IAEA, Iran 

Some 48 percent of Israeli Arabs believe Iran should be permitted to develop nuclear weapons, according to a poll released recently by the University of Haifa.

Professor Sami Samuha, who supervised the poll, attributed the high level of support to Israeli Arabs' desire for "Israel not to be a strong state," or from the stance that "Israel must be stood up to by strong Arab or Muslim states that can restrain it."

The survey also found that 75.5 percent of Israeli Arab citizens think Israel should hold direct negotiations with Hamas. Another 84 percent support a two state-solution, the poll found.
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According to Samuha, the current survey shows that while positions of Arab and Jewish citizens over recent years have become closer, there remains between the two sectors a sharp difference of opinion.

Meanwhile, diplomats said Thursday that Iran has assembled hundreds of advanced machines in a possible indication that it aims to speed up uranium enrichment - a process that can produce both fuel for power plants and the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

One of the diplomats said more than 300 of the centrifuges have been linked up in two separate units in Iran's underground enrichment plant in the town of Natanz and a third was being assembled.

The diplomat said the machines appeared to be more advanced than the thousands already set up and running underground, suggesting they could be the sophisticated IR-2 centrifuge that Tehran has recently acknowledged testing.

But a senior diplomat said that, while the new work appeared to include advanced centrifuges, they were not IR-2s. He added that it was unclear whether the machines were above or under the surface.

The location is significant, since the above ground site at Natanz is for experimental work and the underground facility is the working enrichment plant.

A third diplomat - who like the other two closely follows Iran's nuclear program - confirmed that Iran had started linking up advanced centrifuges in a configuration used for enrichment. But he said all remained above ground and none of the machines were running.

Two of the diplomats spoke earlier this week and the third Thursday. All asked for anonymity because their information was confidential.

In any case, the development reflected Iran's determination to push ahead with its enrichment program despite three sets of UN Security Council sanctions, the most recent imposed last month.

One of the diplomats said officials in Tehran would likely detail the new centrifuge work on April 8, a date Iran has designated National Nuclear Technology Day.

Still, preliminary assembly is only a first step in the complex enrichment process and in comments to the AP earlier this year, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, acknowledged that his country's uranium enrichment program was experiencing ups and downs. It appeared to be the first time Iran admitted its enrichment activities were running into some difficulties.

Furthermore, it was not clear whether the linkups of the more advanced centrifuges in series would ever be used to churn out enriched uranium or whether they were only experimental configurations.

"Something new is definitely going on," said former UN nuclear inspector David Albright of reports of the new development. Still, with information contradictory on the type of centrifuge, its location and the purpose of the linkups, Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks countries under nuclear suspicion, said it was difficult to speculate on the significance of the new work being conducted by the Iranian experts.

In comments to the AP earlier this week, the first diplomat said two linkups or cascades of 176 centrifuges each had recently been assembled and a third was in the process of being put together.

The workhorse of Iran's functioning enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge, which can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the P-1s.

The February announcement was the first official confirmation by Tehran after International Atomic Energy Agency officials reported earlier that month that Iran was using 10 of the new IR-2 centrifuges to produce small amounts of enriched material.

Ten centrifuges are too few to produce enriched uranium in the quantities needed for an industrial-scale energy or weapons program and far below the 3,000 older P-1 centrifuges in Iran's underground enrichment plant in the central town of Natanz.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is intended only to produce energy, but there is growing international concern that it could lead to the development of weapons. Although a U.S. intelligence summary late last year concluded that Tehran stopped working on direct nuclear weapons programs in 2003, enrichment is of concern because it can produce weapons grade uranium for the core of warheads.

The IAEA highlighted the new-generation centrifuges in its February report on Iran but did not provide details on their operation.


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      5.   To avoid unleashing the iranian nuclear beast 06:34  |  Aounist 04/04/08
      6.   IRAN`s leaders have stated their positon on ruling the world 06:43  |  PETER SM 04/04/08
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      17.   I knew they were suicidal 11:53  |  S 04/04/08
      18.   Wrong headline 12:26  |  Simon 04/04/08
      19.   #16 Silvienne 13:15  |  Sarah 04/04/08
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      22.   get it right 14:16  |  k 04/04/08
      23.   For Zev # 20 14:38  |  Clickfool 04/04/08
      24.   Incendiary question 14:53  |  Don 04/04/08
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