Iran won’t stop uranium enrichment

Iran will carry on uranium enrichment, Prime-Tass quoted head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Borouujerdi as saying. The parliamentarian thus responded to the latest statement by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. “Russia is providing the fuel, and taking the fuel back out,” Gibbs said on Friday. “It, quite clearly, I think, underscores that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program.”

Boroujerdi said that Moscow would supply enriched uranium for the Bushehr plant as Iran planned to build a dozen more nuclear plants in the future. “We in the parliament have tasked the government with producing 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity. That means setting up 20 power plants like Bushehr,” said Boroujerdi. “To supply the fuel needed for these power plants ... we should carry out (uranium) enrichment and we are doing it,” he said.

The delivery of nuclear fuel to the first unit of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran will start on August 21, Rosatom Assistant General Director Sergei Novikov told Itar-Tass on Friday.