Iran still awaits West's response to fuel swap
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Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said Wednesday Tehran has not made any new proposal and still awaits West's response to its staged nuclear fuel swap offer, the satellite Press TV reported.
"Iran has offered no new proposal concerning the supply of fuel for the Tehran research reactor," Mehman-Parast was quoted as saying, adding that "We still wait for response of the other party (those involved in fuel swap talks)."
"Our views are the same as what was previously announced and basically there has been no new development regarding the issue," he said.
"Iran is ready to exchange fuel in stages. Should both sides accept the basis of the proposal, discussions may be held over the approach," he said.
Tehran rejected a December 31 deadline set by the United States for Iran to accept a UN-drafted deal for swapping its low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel outside Iran, and instead demanded a simultaneous exchange inside the country.
On January 2, Iran set a one-month deadline for the West to accept its counterproposal to the UN-drafted nuclear plan and warned that otherwise it will produce reactor fuel at a higher level of enrichment on its own.
The world's six major countries involved in the talks, namely the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany, failed to reach an agreement over the Iranian nuclear issue during their meeting on Saturday in New York.
After the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the meeting was "inconclusive in a sense that we didn't make any decisions right away," but added that most of the discussions focused on the "second track," referring to sanctions.
The West accuses Iran of covertly building nuclear weapons but Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is intended to generate electricity for its people.
Iran to launch Bushehr nuclear power plant next year
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said Wednesday his country's first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr will come on stream by the next autumn, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
"We will launch the Bushehr power plant in the first half of next (Iranian) year (beginning on March 21)," chief of the organization Ali Akbar Salehi told Fars.
"We hope to hear good news on Bushehr power plant in the first half of the (next Iranian) year as the plant has passed most tests successfully," he was quoted as saying.
In November, Iran's Ambassador to Moscow Seyed Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi told Fars that Russians intend to put Bushehr nuclear plant into operation by the end of 2009, and that there are several tests which should be conducted on the plant before it can go operational.
The country's 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant was originally constructed in the mid-1970s by Siemens of Germany but was abandoned with the outbreak of the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran and Russia, after reaching an agreement on nuclear cooperation in 1992, signed a contract in January 1995 to finish the construction of the plant, the completion of which has been repeatedly delayed.
