Iran touts nuclear-enrichment progress

TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced major progress in Iran's push for nuclear power, saying Tuesday that his nation was installing thousands of new uranium-enriching centrifuges and testing a much faster version of the device.

Ahmadinejad said scientists were putting 6,000 new centrifuges into place, about twice the current number, and testing a new type that works five times faster.

That would represent a major expansion of uranium enrichment — a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a warhead. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned, however, that the claim could not be immediately substantiated.

Diplomats close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency say Iran has exaggerated its progress and seen problems operating the 3,000 centrifuges already in place. One diplomat said Ahmadinejad's claims of a more-advanced centrifuge appeared to allude to a type known as the IR-2, which the agency and Iran said months ago that Iran had begun testing.

Iran's nuclear ambitions worry the U.S. and its allies, which accuse Iran of using a civilian atomic-energy program to mask a drive for weapons of mass destruction. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ruled nuclear weapons are against Islam, and the country's leaders insist their nuclear program is meant only to produce energy.

Ahmadinejad trumpeted the country's nuclear accomplishments while inspecting the controversial enrichment facility in the central Iranian city of Natanz on the country's third annual National Day of Nuclear Technology, which marks the anniversary of the day Iran began producing enriched uranium.

Iran's state-controlled television and radio have been broadcasting promotional programs touting Iran's nuclear achievements. In downtown Tehran, pro-government activists distributed sweets to passers-by in commemoration of the holiday.

Enriched uranium is produced by processing uranium gas through small, sensitive high-speed centrifuges. It can be used for producing fuel for a power plant or, if highly concentrated, fuel for a nuclear bomb.

A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate late last year concluded that Iran had abandoned a clandestine nuclear-weapons program in 2003.

Still, scientists consider enrichment the most challenging component to building a nuclear-weapons program, and many U.S., European and Israeli officials fear Iran could quickly become a nuclear-weapons power once it masters the enrichment cycle.

The U.N. Security Council last month imposed a third round of relatively mild economic sanctions on Iran over its enrichment program, a move Iran called "unlawful."

Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, urged Iran on Tuesday to reconsider a 2006 offer by Europe, Russia, China and the U.S. to provide the country with nuclear technology and fuel, rather than further defying the Security Council's demand to suspend enrichment.

Iran rejected that offer because it did not want to rely on an outside source for nuclear fuel and insists it has the right to produce its own. It also says it has fully complied with international nonproliferation rules.

Iran last week again turned down a package of economic incentives to abandon enrichment. Russia, which supplies fuel for the Iranian nuclear reactor in the southern city of Bushehr, also last week urged Iran to comply with U.N. and IAEA demands that it halt enrichment activities.