TEHRAN, May 3 (RIA Novosti) - Iran is willing to form a uranium enrichment consortium with Japan and other countries, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a visiting Japanese delegation Wednesday.
Mottaki said trust should be mutual in solving the current nuclear crisis.
"Iran has been voluntarily maintaining a moratorium on nuclear activity for three years to create trust [during talks with EU3], but Europe has failed to offer us anything we could accept," he said at a meeting with a Japanese delegation visiting Iran. "We have lost our trust in the West, and it is their turn now to create confidence-building measures."
He said Iran would not stop its nuclear research program.
Iran's foreign ministry also called Wednesday for the Iran-6 negotiators - the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China and Germany - to acknowledge that the Islamic Republic has nuclear technology and would not renounce its right to civilian nuclear energy.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the country's vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization said Tuesday that Iran has enriched uranium-235 to 4.8% and planned to build a total of 3,000 centrifuges by March 21, 2007 at a uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz.
Aghazadeh also said Iran had opened a uranium-concentrate field and would announce a tender for the construction of two new nuclear power plants within two months, adding that $200 million would be paid in advance to the tender's winner.
