TEHRAN, Iran – Within days, Iran said Sunday, it will resume building centrifuges for its nuclear program – a forceful rejection of international castigation.
But Tehran said it welcomed international supervision of the building program and said it would not use the devices to enrich uranium – for the time being. The process can make uranium into fuel for peaceful or military purposes.
The White House called Iran’s decision further proof it was trying to build an atomic bomb.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said he hoped Iran would reverse its decision, which was a setback in international attempts to resolve the standoff.
“Iran needs to do the maximum to build confidence after a period of confidence deficit. I look at this whole suspension of enrichment as part of this confidence building,” ElBaradei told a news conference in Moscow, where he was attending a conference on nuclear power.
Iran suspended the building of centrifuges and the enrichment of uranium under international pressure, part of the atomic agency’s attempts to determine the intent of Iran’s nuclear program, much of which was kept secret for years.
Iran maintains its atomic program is entirely peaceful, geared toward producing energy.
Tehran’s announcement Sunday came after the agency approved a European-drafted resolution rebuking Iran for past cover-ups in its nuclear program.
Iran informed the atomic agency and the governments of Britain, Germany and France that it would resume building centrifuges Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
But Tehran invited the agency and the three European countries to supervise its building, assembling and testing of centrifuges when the program resumes, Asefi said.
“We will do that according to regulations, under IAEA supervision,” he said.
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