AFP: The United States said Friday it was “seriously concerned” by new reports that Iran is producing the uranium feedstuff that could be used to make nuclear weapons just days before it is due to introduce a promised ban on all such enrichment activities.

Iran Focus: Paris, Nov. 19 – Iran Focus has obtained the text of a press conference by senior representatives of the leading Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which took place in Paris on Wednesday, Nov. 17. Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee, on Wednesday revealed the presence of a new secret nuclear site in Northeast Tehran.

AFP: Iran is producing the uranium feedstuff that could be used to make nuclear weapons, only days before it is due to introduce a promised ban on all such enrichment activities, diplomats told AFP Friday. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in September that Iran was planning to convert 37 tonnes of uranium yellowcake created an international outcry that led Britain, France and Germany to negotiate a full enrichment suspension with Tehran.

Reuters: Iran is preparing large amounts of uranium for enrichment, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons, days before its promise to freeze all such activities takes effect, Western diplomats said on Friday. “The Iranians are producing UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) like hell,” a non-U.S. diplomat on the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters. “The machines are running.”

Reuters: An Iranian exile group accused Tehran on Friday of using advanced laser technology to secretly enrich uranium and of lying to the United Nations nuclear watchdog body about the covert program. The opposition group, which has given accurate information before and made other accusations on Wednesday, said Iran was making bomb-grade uranium at …

The Globe and Mail: Top U.S. officials have accused Iran of secretly modifying its new longer-range missiles so they can be fitted with nuclear warheads, a sharp escalation in the war of words that threatens to scuttle a fragile diplomatic deal worked out between Tehran and three leading members of the European Union.

The Independent: Iran loomed as the second Bush administration’s most urgent foreign policy challenge yesterday, as Colin Powell, the outgoing Secretary of State, warned that the country was working on a missile capable of delivering a nuclear bomb.

The Guardian: The Bush administration yesterday accused
Iran of attempting to develop missiles with nuclear warheads – a charge that could derail the European arms-control agreement struck earlier this week. The accusation was made by the outgoing secretary of state, Colin Powell, while on an official visit to Chile for an Asia-Pacific economic summit.

AP: The Bush administration is not considering talks with Iran on developing nuclear weapons even though Secretary of State Colin Powell will attend a conference next week with diplomats from Iran and other countries. Already suspicious that Iran is developing such weapons, the administration now has intelligence provided by a resistance group that Iran is trying to adapt missiles to deliver the weapons, Powell said Wednesday.