Iranian president fires foreign minister Mottaki

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fired Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday. Ahmadinejad appointed head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, a close ally to the president, as the caretaker for the ministry.

I thank you and appreciate the work and the services you have rendered during your tenure in the foreign ministry, Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in the directive carried by IRNA.

I hope your efforts receive a praise by God and you will be successful in the rest of your life at the service of people of our Islamic nation, he added.

Mottaki, a career diplomat, was appointed to the post of foreign minister in August 2005. He is currently in Senegal on an official visit.

Iran denies problem with uranium enrichment

TEHRAN: Iran Tuesday denied claims that its sensitive uranium enrichment work has been hit by technical problems and stressed that its nuclear programme has not been harmed by the Stuxnet computer worm.

Also rejecting allegations by Western powers that Iran lacks the know-how to make nuclear fuel plates, atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi was adamant the Islamic republic would be producing fuel for a research reactor by September 2011.

Salehi “denied Western media reports that enrichment has stopped in Iran,” the official news agency IRNA reported.

“Iran will never pay attention to lies in Western media on its progressive path in the nuclear issue,” he told IRNA.

Salehi appeared to be reacting to comments by Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who said on Monday that technical problems were slowing down Iran’s

Irans Bushehr nuclear plant starts fuel-loading

Russia will begin loading nuclear fuel into the reactor of Iran’s first atomic power station on Saturday — an irreversible step marking the start-up of the Bushehr plant after nearly 40 years of delay.
Russian specialists and their Iranian counterparts are to begin loading uranium-packed fuel rods into the reactor on Saturday — a process that will take 2-3 weeks. Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko and head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi are expected to attend the official launching ceremony.
Russia agreed in 1995 to build the Bushehr plant on the site of a project started by German company Siemens in the 1970s, but delays have haunted the 1 billion dollar project and diplomats say Moscow has used it as a lever in relation with Tehran.
The United States has criticised Moscow for pushing ahead with the Bushehr project at a time when major powers including Russia are pressing Tehran to allay fears that its nuclear energy programme may be geared to develop weapons.
But western fears that the Bushehr project could help Iran develop a nuclear weapon were lessened when Moscow reached an agreement with Tehran obliging it to return spent fuel to Russia. Weapons-grade plutonium can be derived from spent fuel rods.
The U.S. State Department said it did not regard Bushehr as a proliferation risk, but emphasised that broader concerns remained about the direction of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran starts to fuel up first nuclear power plant

BUSHEHR: Iran began fuelling its first nuclear power plant on Saturday after decades of delay and amid international fears it is seeking an atomic bomb and not just electricity.

State television showed live pictures of Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and his Russian counterpart looking on at what appeared to be a fuel rod suspended from the ceiling.

“The beginning of the first stage of the physical start-up has taken place,” said Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

Russia has built and supplied the fuel for the Bushehr plant, work on which was initially started by German company Siemens in the 1970s, before Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

Iranian officials say it will take two to three months before the plant starts producing electricity once the uranium-packed fuel rods are moved into the

Mexican state security chief wounded in ambush

MORELIA: Gunmen ambushed the motorcade of the top state security official in the Mexican state of Michoacan early Saturday in the latest round of drug-related violence that left 13 people dead around the country.

The assailants opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles and detonated fragmentation grenades in the attack, killing four people and wounding 11 others, including the Michoacan state security secretary, Minerva Bautista.

“A trailer blocked the path of the vans in which Minerva Bautista and her security team were traveling, and in an instant, an armed group opened fire on all the secretary”s people, without a care for civilian passersby,” state prosecutor Jesus Montejano Ramirez said.

Two bodyguards and two civilians were killed in the onslaught. Bautista was hit with a grenade fragment and taken to a local hospital where she was in stable condition, the state government said.

Meanwhile, army troops clashed with suspected drug gangs in towns on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey, leaving six people dead and a soldier injured, the Mexican defense ministry said.

Gunmen attacked an army patrol in the municipality of Juarez, which adjoins Monterrey, and blocked the main avenues with two police cars to keep reinforcements from arriving, it said.

The defense ministry said five “presumed criminals” were killed in the shoot-out.

A short time earlier in the outlying Monterrey district of San Nicolas, soldiers killed a man fleeing a checkpoint in a car, the defense ministry said.

Monterrey has been the scene of a bloody turf war between the Gulf drug cartel and its former allies, Los Zetas.

Since 2006, more than 22,700 people have been killed in Mexico”s spiraling drug violence despite the deployment of some 50,000 troops to provide security in cities ravaged by killings.

In the western resort city of Acapulco, the dismembered bodies of three men were found Saturday stuffed in black plastic garbage backs and left in a house with a message to a rival drug gang, the Guerrero state security office said.

Drug violence has spiked in recent weeks in Acapulco as competing factions fight for control of the organization headed by Arturo Beltran Leyva, a cartel leader killed in December.

Parliament speaker Larijani says US cannot bully Iran

TEHRAN: The United States must understand that it cannot bully Iran and should respect the rights of the Islamic republic, parliament speaker Ali Larijani said in the eastern city of Tabas on Sunday.

“They (US administration) should respect Iran”s rights and understand that you cannot bully Iran,” Larijani said in a speech marking the 30th anniversary of the failed US mission to release American embassy staff taken hostage in the wake of the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Fifty-three employees of the then US embassy in Tehran were held hostage for 444 days by Islamist Iranian students soon after the Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah.

In April 1980, then US President Jimmy Carter sent a rescue mission to free the hostages but the military effort ended in failure, with eight American servicemen killed. Diplomatic ties between the US and Iran have been suspended ever since.

Larijani, whose speech was broadcast live on state television, also criticised diplomatic overtures by US President Barack Obama, saying they were followed by “harsh and sometimes threatening behaviour.”

The senior lawmaker boasted that Western countries were now “humbled in front of Iran”s military might” and did not dare to “attack” the Islamic republic.

“Instead of understanding the region, they want to deceive. You must understand that we are now living in a post-US era,” Larijani said, as the crowd shouted “Death to America!”

In recent months, Washington has stepped up global efforts to impose a fourth round of UN sanctions on Iran for pursuing its nuclear programme, which Tehran insists is peaceful but which Western powers believe masks a drive to manufacture an atomic weapon.

The United States has not ruled out military action to thwart Iran”s nuclear ambitions.

Iran holds talks with IAEA chief on nuclear issues

VIENNA: Iran”s foreign minister met the head of the United Nations” nuclear agency on Sunday to discuss a nuclear fuel swap proposal that could help ease Tehran”s dispute with the West, Iranian officials and media said.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Iranian state television before his meeting with Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that their talks would be “decisive and detailed”.

Iranian officials in the Vienna delegation confirmed to a British news agency the two men had met but they gave no more information.

“The IAEA…can play a more constructive role,” Mottaki said in his earlier comments. “We believe the fuel swap can create multilateral trust.”

Iran, the world”s fifth-largest oil exporter, says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and not intended for military use.

The West believes it is trying to make an atomic bomb and Washington is seeking support from fellow U.N. Security Council veto holders Russia and China for a fourth round of sanctions on Tehran.

Iran”s senior nuclear official Ali Akbar Salehi said on Friday Mottaki would hold talks with all 15 members of the U.N. Security Council over the nuclear standoff.

Tehran says it is prepared to swap its low-level enriched uranium for higher-grade fuel enriched abroad — a move which would help address fears about Iran”s enrichment activities –but that this must happen on Iranian soil. In October Iran agreed in principle to send low-enriched uranium abroad for more processing, but then said the swap should take place inside its territory and simultaneously.

Threats make Iran more determined: Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that any threats from the West against Iran will meet with more determination and reiterated that his government was not seeking an “inhuman” atomic bomb.

In an address marking National Nuclear Day, Ahmadinejad said Iran was now a “nuclear nation” and that it was Western pressure which had forced it to enrich uranium to the 20 percent level that has sparked growing international concern.

“We have said several times that we are honest. We are sure that we are on the right path. But they should know that those who sit in glass palaces are wrong to try to deflect Iran”s will,” the hardliner said.

Ahmadinejad”s comments came a day after China joined five other major powers in agreeing to further talks on a new round of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.

“These kinds of actions will make Iranians more determined,” the president said.

“For example, four months ago we had no intention of making 20 percent (enriched uranium) fuel. But when they talked of threats, we went ahead.”

Ahmadinejad gave instructions on February 7 for Iran to begin enriching uranium to the 20 percent level required for a Tehran medical research reactor after long-running talks on a deal for the major powers to supply the fuel failed to bear fruit.

Western governments slammed the move as a significant step towards the 93 percent level required for making an atomic bomb but Iran again strongly denied any military ambition for its nuclear programme.
Ahmadinejad renewed the denial on Friday but again said Iran was now a nuclear nation. “We are against nuclear weapons… we consider nuclear weapons to be inhuman,” he said.

“They know the path of the Iranian nation is a path of no return. Our experts have reached a point where no power can create hurdles in the way of Iran getting nuclear technology.

“Today, Iran is a nuclear nation. Whether the ill-wishers accept it or not, it is a nuclear nation and with God”s help it will remain one,” he said to chants of Allahu Akbar (God is greater) from the crowd.

Before his speech, Ahmadinejad unveiled a model of a new generation of uranium-enriching centrifuge that atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi said was capable of enriching uranium six times faster than Iran”s existing centrifuges.

Iran to setup two new nuclear faculties

The head of Iran’s nuclear Ali Akbar Salehi program has said Iran will build two new uranium enrichment facilities within the next year, the work on facilities would start next month.

Mr Salehi said the facilities would use new and more advanced centrifuges. He also said the new facilities would be built in the mountains to protect them from attack.

Tehran has always maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful.

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Iran to setup two new nuclear faculties was first posted on February 22, 2010 at 10:55 pm.

Iran Now Capable Of Enriching Uranium Above 80%: Ahmadinejad

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran is now capable of enriching Uranium above 80 percent level. Addressing a rally Ahmadinejad said that Iran has no intentions of making a nuclear bomb but if it does it would do that candidly. Ahmadinejad said that the first consignment of 20 percent enriched Uranium and 20 percent of Atomic fuel has been prepared.
Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran had the capacity to enrich uranium up to a level of 100 percent — but he said the country had no intention of refining the material to that level. Salehi said Iran would have “good news” on improved nuclear enrichment centrifuges in coming months.
Ali Akbar Salehi also said the production of 20 percent nuclear fuel would be limited to the needs of a Tehran medical reactor of around 1.5 kg per month.

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Iran Now Capable Of Enriching Uranium Above 80%: Ahmadinejad was first posted on February 12, 2010 at 3:06 pm.

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