Tehran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has approved the sites for new uranium enrichment plants in Iran, a close aide said on Monday, despite growing world pressure to stop the sensitive nuclear work.
Ahmadinejad's senior adviser Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi told the Ilna news agency that the hardliner had "approved the locations of the new nuclear sites" and the "construction at these sites will start with his order."
He said that the designs of the new plants were currently under study but did not specify how many new facilities had been approved.
In November 2009, a defiant Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would build 10 new uranium enrichment plants after Tehran was censured by the UN nuclear watchdog for constructing its second such facility near the Shiite shrine city of Qom.
Iran currently enriches uranium at a plant in the central city of Natanz in defiance of repeated UN Security Council ultimatums to suspend the sensitive process.
In April, Iran's atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi said that plans for two new enrichment plants had been submitted to Ahmadinejad and their construction would start in the first half of the Iranian year, which runs to March 2011.
Iran is already under three sets of UN sanctions and the possibility of a fourth looms large as Washington steps up efforts to secure agreement at the Security Council.
The five veto-wielding permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are currently engaged in intense negotiations over the details of a new package.
China, which has emerged as Iran's main economic partner in recent years, is still insisting on a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
