Iran confirmed on Monday [17 December 2007] that it had received the first fuel shipment for its nuclear power plant at Bushehr, but also indicated for the first time that it was building a second nuclear power plant.

The revelation came in comments by Iran's Atomic Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, made to state-run television and reported by the semi-official Fars news agency. He was dismissing speculation that the arrival of the fuel would allow Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, in Natanz.

"We are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovein," he said, referring to a southern city north of Bushehr.

"The fuel for this plant needs to be produced by Natanz enrichment plant," he added, Fars said.

Bushehr and Darkhovein were both projects planned before the 1979 Revolution. It was not clear how much construction had been done at Darkhovein. The location is also sometimes spelled Darkhovin, or referred to by other nearby place names, including Ahvaz, Esteghlal and Karun.

Aghazadeh said Monday that Iran needed to increase the centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment plant from 3,000 to 50,000, saying that with the current 3,000, it could only produce fuel for a 100-megawatt plant.

The White House had signaled on Monday that the arrival of the fuel could help convince Iran to curb its enrichment program. President George W. Bush that If Iran accepted the uranium for a civilian power plant, "there was no need for them to learn how to enrich," Reuters reported.

Aghazadeh said the shipment was made after an agreement was made between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit in October to Tehran.

[...]

Aghazadeh said Monday that almost 95 percent of the work at Bushehr was finished and it could produce power as early as the next Iranian year, which begins on March 21.

"The first phase of delivery has been completed," said Irina Esipova, a spokeswoman for Atomstroyexport, the Russian contractor on the project. "A small amount of fuel is already on the premises of the Bushehr station in a special storage facility." The company plans to deliver about 80 tons of nuclear fuel to Iran over the next two months, she said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the fuel would be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency and that Iran had given written guarantees that the fuel would only be used for the nuclear power plant.

"All fuel that will be delivered will be under the control and guarantees of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the whole time it stays on Iranian territory," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Moreover, the Iranian side gave additional written guarantees that the fuel will be used only for the Bushehr nuclear power plant."

The statement added: "After the Russian fuel is processed at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it will be returned to Russia for further processing and storage."

[...]

North Korea continues to move forward with the disablement of three key facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, but has shown more reservations about releasing a full description of its atomic activities, the Washington Post reported Saturday [15 December 2007].

Both moves are components of a plan developed through six-nation talks under which North Korea would eliminate its nuclear sector in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic and security benefits. Pyongyang had pledged to disable the facilities and issue the nuclear declaration by the end of 2007, but U.S. officials said the Stalinist state was no longer expected to meet either deadline.

Four of 11 crucial disablement jobs have been finished at a five-megawatt nuclear reactor and two other facilities at Yongbyon, U.S. officials said. Work is nearly finished on another three tasks.

Removal of irradiated fuel rods from the reactor began Friday. Technicians have taken additional steps at all three sites to ensure that it would take at least a year for North Korea to resume operations at the facilities.

One hurdle in meeting the Dec. 31 deadline was the U.S. insistence that contaminated water in a cooling pond for spent fuel rods be filtered during the fuel-removal process.

Pyongyang remains reluctant to release the full accounting of its nuclear activities sought by Washington, the Post reported. “You are dealing with a country that is not instinctively given to handing out information,” one official told the Post.

The Bush administration wants details of North Korean nuclear proliferation activities, particularly with regards to Syria. Pyongyang said it is not now conducting any such activities and prefers to focus on the present.

While Pyongyang wants only to provide amounts of plutonium production, Washington wants to know how much of the material has been weaponized. The White House seeks information North Korea’s suspected uranium enrichment efforts beyond what the regime is willing to discuss. U.S. officials also believe that North Korea will not provide a full list of its nuclear facilities.

U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday pressed Pyongyang again to provide a complete nuclear declaration, after the White House acknowledged that North Korea had responded to Bush’s personal letter to Kim Jong Il, Agence France-Presse reported.

“There’s a way forward for Kim Jong Il, and an important step is a full declaration of programs, materials that may have been developed to create weapons, as well as the proliferation activities of the regime,” Bush said.

“I got his attention with a letter, and he can get my attention by fully disclosing his programs, including any plutonium he may have processed and converted. Whatever he’s used it for, we just need to know”.

Russia has completed its first shipment of low-enriched uranium fuel to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, Reuters reported today.

“On Dec. 16 the delivery of fuel began from Russia to the Iranian atomic power station in Bushehr,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Responding to potential diplomatic protests from Western powers over the shipment, the foreign ministry said that Iran vowed use the uranium fuel only for power production.

“The Iranian side has supplied additional written assurances regarding the fact that the fuel will be used exclusively for the atomic power station at Bushehr,” the statement said.

Iran is now storing the first several fuel rods at its Bushehr facility, which remains under construction. The remaining fuel is expected to be delivered within two months and the plant is expected to begin operation six months after the shipments are complete.

The countries have not set a deadline for completing the facility, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

“Talks between [Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr] Mottaki and his Russian counterpart were comprehensive. … We believe the Russians are serious about completing Bushehr power plant but no date has been fixed for the completion,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said the plant’s construction is being overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that its nuclear equipment or fuel is not diverted to the Iranian military, United Press International reported.

“[The] IAEA controls all nuclear activities in Iran,” RIA Novosti quoted Kislyak as saying Saturday. “Iran will never obtain high enriched uranium … while IAEA is there.

“We believe that qualitatively new conditions have been created which will allow Iran to take the steps which are demanded of it … for the restoration of trust in the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program,” the ministry statement said.

However, a high-level Iranian official said Iran has no intention of suspending its indigenous uranium enrichment program despite Moscow’s urgings to do so.

“There is no talk of halting enrichment. Nothing is related to freezing enrichment. The delivery (of fuel) is not in the framework of the (U.N.) resolutions or the framework of talks,” the official told Reuters.

Iran would need dozens of tons of nuclear fuel to operate the Bushehr plant in its first year, Agence France-Presse reported

“The fuel for the first stage is 82 tons," the Iranian Student News Agency quoted the official.

Meanwhile, 27 EU nations said in a statement Friday that they would push for new sanctions against Iran if it does not suspend its uranium enrichment program, Reuters reported.

The statement said the council of EU member nations “reiterates its full support to the work in the U.N. Security Council to adopt further measures,” noting that the EU will make a final decision on whether to support sanctions at a meeting of its foreign ministers scheduled for Jan. 28.

The statement also called on Tehran to provide the U.N. nuclear watchdog with “full, clear and credible answers” to questions about its nuclear activities.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Iran had provided the EU with “no assurances about uranium enrichment and the purpose of it in Iran.”

“There is no evidence of a civil nuclear program and therefore the Iranian enrichment that has been part of the work of Iran is a problem for the international community,” Brown said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that the U.N. Security Council lacks a basis for imposing new sanctions against Iran, the Associated Press reported.

“In my opinion, there is no justification,” he said in a live television interview. “I think it is very unlikely that they, the West, is ready to pressure the agency, once again”.

The Iranian president added that new sanctions were unlikely, Reuters reported.

“It was in fact a declaration of surrender,” he said. “It was a positive action by the U.S. administration to change their attitude and it was a correct move.”

In a Dec. 3 address, Ahmadinejad said a recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate’s assertion that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 was a “victory” for Iran.

The planned deployment of US interceptor missiles in Poland could trigger a missile strike by Russia if those missiles are ever used, the Russian army's chief of staff warned on Saturday [15 December 2007].

"We are talking about the possibility of a retaliatory strike being triggered by the mistaken classification of an interceptor missile," Yury Baluyevsky said at a press conference broadcast on state television.

Baluyevsky explained that an interceptor missile launched by the United States could be mistaken by Russia's automatic defence system for a ballistic missile aimed against Russia.

"Who is going to take responsibility for an automatic triggering of the system if an interceptor missile is launched from Polish territory through Russia to strike down an Iranian missile?"

"I don't mean to scare anyone but this isn't a scare story.... It's a technical detail that could affect the military stability of the world," Baluyevsky said.

The United States has outlined plans to site 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic by 2012 as part of a missile defence shield aimed, Washington says, against a possible missile threat from Iran.

Russia has said that there is no such threat and that the missile shield can therefore only be aimed at Russia. Russia has vowed to take measures to defend its security against the US plans.