Iran warns: it will make its own nuclear fuel

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran set a one-month deadline Saturday for the West to accept its counterproposal to a U.N.-drafted nuclear plan and warned that otherwise it will produce reactor fuel at a higher level of enrichment on its own.
The warning was a show of defiance and a hardening of Iran's stance over its nuclear program, which the West fears masks an effort to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran insists its program is only for peaceful purposes, such as electricity production, and says it has no intention of making a bomb.
"We have given them an ultimatum. There is one month left and that is by the end of January," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, speaking on state television.
Even if Tehran started working on the fuel production immediately, it would likely take years before it could master the technology to turn uranium enriched to the level of 20 percent into the fuel rods it needs for a medical research reactor.
Still, any threat to enrich uranium to a higher level is likely to rattle the world powers that have been trying to persuade Iran to forgo enrichment altogether.
Enrichment is at the center of the West's concerns because at high levels it can be used in making nuclear weapons. At lower levels, enriched uranium is used in the production of fuel for nuclear power plants.
Iran dismissed an end-of-2009 deadline imposed by the Obama administration and its international partners to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap most of its enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The deal would reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, limiting—at least for the moment—its capability to make nuclear weapons.
The U.S. and its allies have demanded Iran accept the terms of the U.N.-brokered plan without changes.
Instead, Tehran came up with a counterproposal: to have the West either sell nuclear fuel to Iran, or swap its nuclear fuel for Iran's enriched uranium in smaller batches instead of at once as the U.N. plan requires.
This is unacceptable to the West because it would leave Tehran with enough enriched material to make nuclear arms.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, refused to comment Saturday on Iran's announcement of a one-month deadline. The U.S. State Department also had no immediate comment.
The U.N. deal has been the centerpiece of the West's latest diplomatic push to get Iran to scrap a key part of its nuclear work.
Under the plan, drafted in November, Iran would export most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium for further enrichment in Russia and France, where it would be converted into fuel rods. The rods, which Iran needs for the research reactor in Tehran, would be returned to the country about a year later.
Exporting the uranium would temporarily leave Iran without enough of a stockpile to further enrich the uranium into material for a nuclear warhead, and the rods that are returned cannot be processed further for use in making weapons.
"They (the West) must decide on supplying fuel for the Tehran reactor on one of the two offers—purchase or swap," Mottaki said. "Otherwise, the Islamic Republic of Iran will produce the 20 percent enriched fuel with its own capable experts."
Iran currently has one operating enrichment facility that churns out enriched uranium at a level of 3.5 percent. The country needs fuel enriched to 20 percent to power the Tehran medical research reactor. For nuclear weapons, uranium needs to be enriched to 90 percent or more.
The U.N. has demanded Iran suspend all enrichment, a demand Tehran refuses to meet, saying it has a right to develop the technology under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran has also defiantly announced it intends to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites, drawing a forceful rebuke from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and warnings of the possibility of new U.N. sanctions.
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press

Iran nuclear Bomb tests

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed as a US forgery a document allegedly showing plans by Tehran to test a nuclear bomb trigger.
In a US TV interview Mr Ahmadinejad said the report in the Times newspaper was "fundamentally not true".
He said criticism of Iran's nuclear program had become "a repetitive and tasteless joke".
Iran denies claims it wants to build atomic weapons, saying its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.
The BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington says the interview offered a rare opportunity to see an Iranian leader being questioned by the US media.
But Mr Ahmadinejad's answers gave little indication that his administration is moving towards a more conciliatory position, says our correspondent.
'Fabricated papers'
The Times reported last week that it had obtained a document, dating from 2007, describing a four-year plan by Iran to test a nuclear trigger using uranium deuteride.
The product can be used as a neutron initiator: the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion.
The memo apparently details how some work on the trigger should be outsourced to universities, but other work is too secret and must be carried out by "trustworthy personnel" within the organisation allegedly carrying out Iran's secret nuclear weapons research.
Another document seen by the Times is said to be a memo from Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, naming him as the chairman of the Field for the Expansion of Deployment of Advance Technology (Fedat) - which the newspaper says is a cover for a secret nuclear weapons programme.
In his first public response to the report, Mr Ahmadinejad said the accusations were "fundamentally not true".
In an interview filmed on Friday with ABC News, but broadcast on Monday, he dismissed the documents, saying: "They are all a fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government."
When asked if there would "be no nuclear weapon in Iran, ever", Mr Ahmadinejad said his view was already known.
"You should say something only once. We have said once that we don't want a nuclear bomb. We don't accept it."
A senior adviser to US President Barack Obama, David Axelrod, said it was "nonsense" that the US had fabricated the documents.
"Nobody has any illusions about what the intent of the Iranian government is," he told ABC.
'Bullying'
Iran is already subject to three sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
It is at risk of further sanctions after it rejected a deal to send low-enriched uranium abroad to be refined into fuel for a research reactor.
A defiant Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran would welcome talks "under fair conditions".
"We don't welcome confrontation, but we don't surrender to bullying either," he said.
"If you are saying you are going to impose sanctions, then go and do it."
Ahmadinejad also rejected criticism of Iran's human rights situation and allegations of mass arrests following the elections which returned him to office in June.
"These things have to do with the judiciary. We have good laws. There is the judge. These people have got lawyers. These are not political questions."
He said people in Iran had more freedom than in the US.
The ABC interview took place before the latest protests held at the funeral of the influential dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for purely peaceful purposes, aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more gas and oil.
But the US and its allies say it could be used to develop weapons.

Source: BBC News