Iran accelerated uranium enrichment on the same day this week that world powers asked it to halt the work and open talks on guaranteeing it will not make nuclear weapons, the UN atomic agency said Thursday in a report obtained by AFP. Iran stepped up enrichment on June 6 — the same day European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited Tehran to present a package of benefits to be discussed if Iran would suspend uranium enrichment, which makes nuclear reactor fuel or in highly refined form atom bomb material, the report said. On that Tuesday, it said, Iran started feeding the raw material of uranium hexafluoride gas, or UF6, into a connected series of 164 centrifuges — known as a cascade — to produce enriched uranium.Iran is also building new production lines of the centrifuges that carry out the sensitive nuclear work, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report to be discussed by the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors next week in Vienna.
And Iran confirms it: An Iranian official has confirmed that the country has stepped up its nuclear activities, following a report from the UN atomic agency that said Iran has accelerated uranium enrichment.
"Iran has started another stage of injecting hexafluoride gas into centrifuge machines," the student news agency ISNA quoted an unnamed official as saying on Friday. "Iran is also pursuing a plan to have a 3,000-centrifuge cascade by the end of the current year (March 2007)," he noted, adding that all the material used in uranium enrichment facilities has been produced domestically.