Iran to step up uranium enrichment, angers West

VIENNA, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Iran on Monday told the U.N. nuclear watchdog it will step up its uranium enrichment efforts, raising fears that Tehran is determined to build a nuclear bomb.

Wolfgang Ischinger's gamble failed. The organizer of the Munich Security Conference had invited Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, hoping that he would announce Tehran's willingness to enrich uranium abroad -- just as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated last week. Japan, France and Russia had offered to enrich uranium for Iran.

Yet Mottaki on Saturday snubbed Ischinger and most Western leaders at the conference by telling the audience that Tehran is not willing to accept any rules regarding its controversial nuclear program.

A day later Ahmadinejad stepped the conflict up a notch when ordering its nuclear agency to boost nuclear enrichment at home. He said the West had ignored Tehran's willingness to enrich abroad with additional conditions.

The country's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi Monday said he had delivered to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, a letter announcing that Iran would start enriching uranium to 20 percent, up from 3.5 percent, at Natanz, Iran's main uranium enrichment facility.

Uranium enriched to 3.5 percent is sufficient for commercial energy reactors, while 20 percent would supply a research reactor in Tehran designed to produce medical isotopes, the government claims. Yet Western experts have warned that achieving 20 percent enrichment is a major step for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, which would require uranium enriched to at least 90 percent.

He added that Iran aims to construct 10 new enrichment plants within a year, a plan experts say will likely not materialize.