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Iran threatens to restart nuclear work
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-08-01 05:34
TEHERAN: Iran warned yesterday it would resume sensitive nuclear work within
days if the European Union failed to submit proposals aimed at ending a
long-running crisis over its nuclear programme.
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| Outgoing Iranian President Mohammad Khatami gestures as he gets
into his car after a cabinet meeting in Tehran July 27, 2005. Iran will
resume some key work on its nuclear fuel cycle regardless of what European
diplomats propose to defuse a dispute over Tehran's atomic ambitions,
Khatami said on Wednesday. [Reuters] | Foreign
ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran would inform the UN nuclear
watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, later yesterday or today of
the resumption of some uranium conversion work, a key stage in the nuclear fuel
cycle.
"The time limit (on the suspension of such activities) has passed and public
opinion cannot wait any longer," Asefi said.
The conversion process, carried out in Iran at a facility in the central city
of Isfahan, changes uranium ore into the uranium gas that is the feedstock for
enrichment.
Although Iran has currently frozen its enrichment work, chief nuclear
negotiator Hassan Rowhani said Iran was capable of producing enriched uranium in
a very short time if it came under attack.
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