Posted on 02/09/2003 12:59:24 PM PST by AntiGuv
TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mohammad Khatami said on Sunday Iran had mined uranium for use in its nuclear power plants and would reprocess the spent fuel itself, but insisted its nuclear program was solely for civilian use.
The surprise announcement, in a speech broadcast on state television, was the first time Iran has acknowledged possession of uranium ore reserves.
It may alarm Washington, which accuses the Islamic Republic of harboring secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.
"Iran has discovered reserves and extracted uranium...we are determined to use nuclear technology for civilian purposes," Khatami said. He said the uranium had been extracted in the Savand area, 125 miles from the central city of Yazd, and processing facilities had been set up in the central cities of Isfahan and Kashan.
Iran, which Washington has labelled a member of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, insists its nuclear plans are purely for civilian purposes, to meet growing demand for electricity from its 65 million people.
It has invited inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), to verify its nuclear facilities later this month.
In another development, state television quoted Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani as saying Iran, for the first time, had developed the capacity to produce composite solid fuels for its missiles.
"This solid fuel could be used for any kind of missile," he said after inaugurating a manufacturing plant on Sunday.
Iran makes medium-range missiles, anti-tank missiles, air- to-surface missiles and surface-to-surface guided missiles that use composite solid fuel.
U.S. CRITICAL OF RUSSIAN HELP
Washington, Iran's arch-foe, has long been at odds with Russia over its help in building an $800 million nuclear power plant at Iran's southwestern port of Bushehr, which Tehran expects to come on stream at the end of 2003 or early in 2004.
U.S. fears over the project were somewhat assuaged by assurances from Moscow that all spent fuel from the plant would be returned to Russia, ensuring that it would not be diverted to a weapons program.
But Khatami said on Sunday that Iran intended to control the whole fuel cycle itself, from mining and processing the uranium ore to reprocessing the spent fuel.
"If we need to produce electricity from our nuclear power plants, we need to complete the circle from discovering uranium to managing remaining spent fuel," he said. "The government is determined to complete that circle."
Diplomats said Khatami's announcement stemmed from world pressure to come clean about the scope of its nuclear program.
"They seem to be making a creeping announcement of what their capabilities are," said one European diplomat.
The head of the Iranian parliament's Energy Commission, Hossein Afarideh, told Reuters the extracted uranium, after being processed, could be used as fuel for the Bushehr power plant.
Iran has signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and has said it might build further nuclear power plants to meet its booming electricity demand.
In other words,"We see how the UN can't find Saddams weapons and we feel they can't find ours either."
Hey now......this looks more threatening by the minute. Could there be a pact among Iraq, Iran, al-Qaeda, and N. Korea to mine uranium, produce fissionable material, produce bio-weapons, and produce solid-fuel missiles to direct these products of their evil thinking against their common enemies - US and Israel? Hmmmm?
Now the President's policy to strike pre-emptively at any member of the axis preparing to strike us, looks both rational and re-assuring.
Where do they have a tactical advantage? Azerbayozhan region of the Caspian?
Nail on the head BUMP!
Same here. Thank G_d for President Bush, who can and will take on these hard problems!
After what North Korea did, the only question is why Iran took so long to emulate their successful example.
To me, being a conservative means, in part, being aware that there is often considerable wisdom in the practices of past generations. One of those practices was that when a diplomat delivers a war ultimatum, the receiver of the ultimatum is only given approximately 24 hours to comply or face war. This prevents one's adversaries from using the time between ultimatum and war to their benefit. In this case, the US identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an axis of evil, and then gave one member of the axis, Iraq, an ultimatum -- we told them to disarm or face war. The original Resolution 1441 US draft was essentially such an ultimatum. If we were unwilling to go to war immediately when the ultimatum was rejected, should we ever have made the ultimatum in the first place?
If the US acted more promptly on our properly rare war ultimatums, we would be earn more respected from our adversaries, and, after the fact, perhaps from our friends also.
If true Security Council backing for war against Iraq was ever possible, that would be different. But that was always a long shot. Yea, I know that UK support required us playing the UN game. But if Blair is eventually deposed by his party over UK involvement in war against Iraq, as is likely, the political value of UK support for the war on terroism will be effectively negated.
So far, Colin Powell's diplomatic approach has been fabulously successful. Getting Resolution 1441, and them bringing Turkey and the UK on board for the likely coming Iraq invasion, were diplomatic triumphs. But basing US foreign policy on wishful thinking has to come back to bite us eventually. No?
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