AFP: Iran will pursue its nuclear drive in a "normal fashion" and will produce itself the fuel necessary for its Tehran medical reactor, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday. BEIRUT (AFP) — Iran will pursue its nuclear drive in a "normal fashion" and will produce itself the fuel necessary for its Tehran medical reactor, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday.
"Nuclear activity will continue in a normal fashion," Mottaki told a news conference as he wrapped up a brief visit to Lebanon.
"Concerning the fuel needed for the Tehran reactor … Iran will produce it itself," he said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told AFP on Friday that Iran was ready to strike a uranium enrichment deal if the United States and the West respect the Islamic Republic and stop making threats.
Iran is under three sets of UN sanctions for refusing to suspend enrichment and risks a further round after rejecting a UN-brokered deal to send its low-enriched uranium abroad to be further refined into fuel for the reactor.
But speaking in Cairo, where he is on an official visit, Iranian parliament speaker and former top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said the country would not be hurt by new sanctions.
He said they "would have no effect on the Iranian scene."
Enrichment lies at the heart of fears over Iran's atomic work as the process to make nuclear fuel can also be used to make the fissile core of an atom bomb in much higher purifications.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.
Earlier this month the United States dismissed an offer by Iran to swap on the Iranian island of Kish 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel enriched to 20 percent, in what would be the first phase of a deal with world powers.
