January
28, 2008
Russia Completes Fuel Deliveries
to Iran's First Nuclear Plant
Tehran
Russia delivered Monday the final fuel shipment to the Bushehr
nuclear power plant it is building in southern Iran, the Islamic
Republic's nuclear officials said.
With the eighth consignment of five tonnes of nuclear fuel
delivered, Russia has supplied a total of 82 tonnes of low-enriched
uranium to the light-water nuclear power plant, which has been the
focus of international attention over fears Iran is developing
nuclear weapons.
The first delivery of fuel to the plant, being built by Russian
contractor Atomstroyexport, arrived on Dec 16, 2007 following months
of project delays that Moscow attributed to payment arrears, but
which Iran blamed on pressure from Western nations.
Under a bilateral intergovernmental contract, Russia has agreed to
deliver 82 tonnes of nuclear fuel in eight shipments.
Deliveries were monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham earlier said
Tehran expects bilateral relations to substantially improve as a
result of the fuel deliveries.
"Russia and Iran maintain good, developing relations. The deliveries
of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant are also a good
pretext for boosting cooperation between our countries," he said.
US President George W. Bush, who has led international calls for
sanctions against Iran over its refusal to freeze its nuclear
programme, said last month that he supported the start of Russia's
enriched uranium deliveries to the Islamic Republic, and that Tehran
no longer has any excuse to develop its own enrichment capabilities.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov echoed Bush's comments in
late December, saying it would not be economically viable for Iran
to continue its uranium enrichment programme.
However, Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali-Hamenei insisted
earlier this month that Tehran would continue enriching uranium for
future nuclear power plants.
Two sets of UN Security Council sanctions are currently in place
against Tehran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
The five permanent UN Security Council members or the P5 - the US,
Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany agreed on Jan 22 at
talks in Berlin on a draft for new measures against the Islamic
Republic, strengthening two previous rounds of sanctions but falling
short of the punitive steps proposed by Washington.
The draft was circulated on Friday in the Security Council and may
be discussed by the end of this week.
"We hope that the Security Council will not make the wrong
decisions, knowing that there are no grounds for doing so," Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said last Saturday in Davos,
Switzerland.
He reiterated that last year the IAEA issued a generally positive
report on Tehran's cooperativeness with UN inspectors, and a US
intelligence community report stated that the country had dropped
nuclear weapons research several years ago.
Tehran plans to hold tenders for the construction of 19 new reactors
and to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity at its nuclear power
plants in the next two decades.
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