TEHRAN, May 26 (RIA Novosti) - The international community should acknowledge Iran's right to enrich uranium, the Iranian foreign minister said Saturday.
On Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), presented a report that said Iran has ignored the demands of the UN Security Council to halt its uranium enrichment and has continued working on nuclear projects.
"As part of Iran's right to possess a nuclear fuel cycle, [the right to] uranium enrichment should be fully recognized by the international community," Manouchehr Mottaki said.
Since Iran resumed uranium enrichment in January 2006, the country has been the focus of international concerns, as some Western countries, particularly the U.S., suspect Tehran is pursuing a covert weapons program. But Tehran has consistently claimed it needs nuclear power for civilian power generation and is fully entitled to its own nuclear program.
"Iran's task is obvious, which is to produce nuclear fuel for civilian use and the country may also supply nuclear fuel to other nuclear power plants in the world," Mottaki said.
On Friday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Tehran intends to become a nuclear fuel exporter.
"Not only will we not halt the uranium enrichment centrifuges, but we will quickly integrate them into our nuclear fuel cycle so as to become an exporter of nuclear fuel," Ahmadinejad said.
ElBaradei Wednesday's report could trigger a new wave of sanctions against Iran, which will be the third since penalties were first introduced against it in December 2006.
The IAEA head said earlier this year that it will take between four and eight years for Iran to produce a nuclear bomb if it maintains the current pace of nuclear development.
On April 19, Ahmadinejad said that Iran had mastered industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel, giving up a research-level program. Recent reports said Tehran was already running 1,600 uranium enrichment centrifuges in its Natanz underground complex.
