Ahmadinejad unveils nuclear projects live on television

Feb 15, 2012, 13:30 GMT

Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated three new nuclear projects Wednesday - in a show of defiance against mounting international pressure for the country to abandon its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, the European Union in Brussels said it had received a letter from Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saedi Jalili on the possible relaunch of negotiations with the bloc's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

'We are carefully studying the letter and consulting with our E3+3 partners,' said Ashton's spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic, referring to the world powers the EU represents in the talks with Iran: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

Ashton had been waiting for a response since October, when she wrote to Jalili asking Iran to return to the negotiating table without setting any preconditions.

In Tehran, in a ceremony broadcast live on state television network IRIB, Ahmadinejad witnessed the insertion of Iran's first home-made nuclear fuel rods into a medical reactor.

The president then opened, via a video-conference link-up, two other projects in the Natanz plant in central Iran.

The plant there will now be able to enrich uranium to 20 per cent and will also use of a new type of centrifuge, capable of a far higher enrichment speed than previous models.

Also present at the ceremony in Tehran were Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi and nuclear chief Mohammad Abbasi.

The IRIB report did not mention the opening of the new enrichment site of Fordo in Qom province, which had been expected to be among the projects inaugurated by the president.

The facility, about 160 kilometres south of Tehran, is capable of enriching uranium to levels of 3.5, 4 and 20 per cent.

The Tehran reactor was established in 1967 and equipped with a 5-megawatt pool-type. The fuel for this reactor was initially provided by Argentina, but this stopped a few years ago.

The fuel for the Tehran reactor was then supposed to be provided by Russia and France but a deal struck in October 2009 failed, and Iran began making the fuel itself, by first enriching uranium to 20 per cent and then turning it into fuel rods.

Enriched uranium is a critical component for both civil nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its programme is peaceful, but in November the International Atomic Energy Agency provided evidence that the country was developing a nuclear bomb. In response, the EU tightened sanctions, which now include a freeze on central bank assets and an oil embargo effective from July 1.

On Wednesday, the Iranian Oil Ministry denied earlier state media reports that the country had responded by immediately terminating oil exports to France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry had earlier summoned the ambassadors of the six countries to protest against the EU sanctions.

Iran's parliament, however, still plans to approve a bill aimed at stopping oil sales to EU countries involved in an oil embargo initiative. The debate on the bill has been postponed to March.