Tehran to celebrate nuke programme

Tehran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that Iran will celebrate the "stabilisation" of its nuclear programme as early as next week — a comment believed to mean Tehran will announce the start of installing 3,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

Ahmadinejad spoke as Iran kicked off 10 days of celebrations marking the 28th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-US Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought the hardline clerics to power.

The nation will celebrate "the stabilisation and the establishment of its full right" to enrich uranium, Ahmadinejad said as he paid tribute at a shrine of the revolution's leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"The government is required to fulfill this [nuclear] national will," he was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The United States has already warned that installing the centrifuges could spark further sanctions against Iran, which the United Nations has demanded suspend its uranium enrichment programme.