Tehran - Iran said on Monday it was pressing ahead with a plan to install 3,000 atomic centrifuges and for industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel, which the West fears is part of a programme to make bombs.

"We are moving towards production of nuclear fuel which needs 3,000 centrifuges and more than that.... This plan is going ahead and is moving towards completion," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a weekly news conference.