TEHRAN, March 22: Iran will not renounce uranium enrichment, a top nuclear official reaffirmed on Tuesday a day ahead of key talks, warning European countries against wasting time in the negotiations. Iran says it has the right to the nuclear fuel cycle, as laid down in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Tehran is a signatory to NPT.

“Iran has a legitimate right to a nuclear fuel cycle and will not give it up for any incentives,” the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, Hossein Mousavian, said on state radio. “If there is progress in the negotiations we will continue (the talks) for three months, but if there is no progress and we notice the other side is wasting time, Iran will revise its position,” he added.

Iran and officials from Britain, France and Germany are due to start a new round of negotiations in Paris, where a steering committee has to evaluate work done since December and decide how talks can go on.

“The steering committee must examine work done in different committees tomorrow before noon and the conclusions will be taken to their respective capitals for making a decision,” Mousavian said.

Since December, the European Union has been trying in talks to get Iran to abandon crucial nuclear fuel cycle activities in return for a package of trade, technology and security rewards.

Iran flatly rejects the Europeans’ demand that it abandon uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but which can also be used to manufacture the explosive core of atom bombs.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Saeidi, vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), echoed Mousavian’s remarks, saying that Iran was committed to enriching uranium.

“Iran has to put into place a system for mining and processing uranium ores and also for its conversion and enrichment,” he said at a conference on nuclear energy in Paris.

“The people and government of Iran are determined to open their way through the tortuous path of peaceful use of nuclear technology despite all imposed restrictions and difficulties,” Saeidi said, referring to US sanctions against the Islamic republic.

Saeidi said that Iran, one of the world’s major oil producers, still needed nuclear energy to reverse the trend of unrestrained use of fossil resources.

He restated Iran’s goal to eventually produce 7,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity, including the 1000-megawatt Bushehr power plant, a light-water reactor, which is already being built.

Saeedi said Iran was determined to become a supplier of atomic fuel. But he said Iran intended only to produce low-grade enriched uranium fuel for peaceful power plants, not highly enriched material for weapons.

The Iranians have refused to give up their enrichment programme, as demanded by the EU, and have offered instead to permit increased inspections by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to limit the enrichment of uranium to a very low level. But this is unacceptable to the Europeans, who want the programme completely stopped and dismantled.—Reuters/AFP