PARIS : Iran reaffirmed that it will pursue a full-scale nuclear program, a day ahead of talks in Paris at which the European Union will urge Tehran to abandon crucial fuel activities in order to show it is not secretly developing atomic weapons. Mohammad Saeidi, vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), told a conference on nuclear power Tuesday in Paris that Iran was committed however to enriching uranium for what can be nuclear fuel. But highly enriched uranium can also be the explosive core of nuclear bombs. The Iranian program aims for "self-sufficiency in all aspects of the peaceful use of nuclear energy including the provision of nuclear fuel," Saeidi said. "Iran has to put into place a system for mining and processing uranium ores and also for its conversion and enrichment," he said.
Saeidi did not refer to the Iran-EU talks. "The people and government of Iran are determined to open their way through the tortuous path of peaceful use of nuclear technology despite all imposed restrictions and difficulties," Saeidi said, referring to US sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The United States charges that Iran is using its civilian nuclear energy program as a cover for secretly developing nuclear weapons. The EU has since December been meeting with Iran to get it to abandon uranium enrichment in return for trade, technology and security rewards. The two sides are to meet in Paris Wednesday in order to review progress so far in the talks.
Saeidi said that Iran, one of the world's major oil producers, still needed nuclear energy "to reverse the trend of unrestrained use of fossil resources." "In the long term, fossil fuel cannot be considered as a sustainable source of energy," Saeidi said, adding that this "made Iran's reliance on only fossil fuel's energy unreasonable and unaffordable and... also made using new technologies such as the nuclear technology more competitive." He restated Iran's goal to eventually produce 7,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity, including the 1000-megawatt Bushehr power plant, a light-water reactor, already being built. In addition, Iran is building a heavy-water reactor, which uses natural uranium rather than enriched uranium, Saeidi said. The heavy-water reactor, which is being built at Arak, produces plutonium, from which atom bombs can also be built. Saeidi said the Arak reactor was intended to made medical isotopes. |