VIENNA - Iran has introduced small amounts of uranium gas into advanced centrifuges it is testing at its main nuclear complex, diplomats said, in a further step toward gaining the means to develop atom bombs if it chooses.
A European Union diplomat said the move was a "stunning rejection" of repeated UN Security Council demands that Iran suspend sensitive nuclear activity, and could hasten passage of broader sanctions drafted by six world powers.
Iran says it wants to enrich uranium only to produce electricity so it can export more oil. But it is under sanctions for hiding the program until 2003, preventing UN inspectors since then from verifying it is wholly peaceful, and refusing to suspend it.
Diplomats familiar with UN nuclear watchdog inspections disclosed last week that Iran had begun testing, without nuclear material, a more efficient centrifuge to replace an erratic old model it now uses to enrich uranium.
They said Iran had now begun test-feeding token quantities of uranium UF6 gas into a few of the new generation centrifuges in the pilot wing of the Natanz enrichment complex. No further details were immediately available.
International Atomic Energy Agency officials had no comment, saying details would come in a report their director, Mohamed ElBaradei, will deliver to the Vienna-based group's 35-nation Board of Governors and the UN Security Council next week.
The IR-2 centrifuge, an adaptation of a Pakistani model whose design Iran obtained in the 1990s from a nuclear smuggling network, could refine uranium two to three times as fast as the older model Iran has used to date.
Tehran's quest to produce usable amounts of nuclear fuel has been hampered by problems getting its existing P-1 line of centrifuges to spin nonstop at maximum speed. Iran had 3,000 P-1s working by November, a basis for launching industrial-scale enrichment, but only at an estimated 10 percent of capacity.
Three-thousand P-1s could yield enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb in about a year if run at full capacity, but it would take only 1,200 IR-2s to do so, US nuclear analyst David Albright said in a commentary last week.
Diplomats tracking the IAEA's Iran file said last week that Iran had decided to install no more P-1s in Natanz's vast underground production hall and to expand capacity using only their more advanced successor.
Iran revealed in 2006 that it was developing supposedly state-of-the-art centrifuges at workshops put off-limits to IAEA inspectors in retaliation for steps by Western powers to impose initial sanctions on Tehran.
Also yesterday, Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said the Kremlin disapproves of Iran's efforts to enrich uranium, the Associated Press reported.
"We don't approve of Iran's continuously demonstrating its intentions to develop its missile industry and continue uranium enrichment," Lavrov told Russian news wires on his way back from talks in Slovenia with EU officials.
"From the point of view of international law, these activities aren't forbidden," he said. "However, it's necessary to take into account that the past years have shown a number of problems related to Iran's nuclear program."
