Iran starts work on first home-made nuclear plant

Tehran: Iran has started building its first domestically-made atomic power plant, a senior official announced yesterday, and Tehran's foreign minister said nuclear talks with the EU were likely in Spain this month.

The deputy head of the atomic energy agency said the planned facility would have a capacity of 360 megawatt, in a statement underlining Iran's determination to press ahead with its nuclear programme despite Western suspicions.

"In the next decade Iran will be one of the most talked-about countries in the world regarding domestic nuclear energy," Mohammad Saeedi of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation was quoted as saying by the Isna news agency.

Iran is in a deepening standoff with major powers over its nuclear programme which the West fears is aimed at making warheads. Tehran says it wants only to produce electricity.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has taken a lead role in Western contacts with Iran, has said it would "probably take years" to resolve the nuclear dispute.

Solana last met Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani in Turkey on April 25-26 and agreed to hold more talks in the next few weeks.

"There is a high possibility that it [a meeting] will take place in Spain," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the Ilna news agency.

He suggested it would be held sometime between May 22 and May 31. The official Irna news agency had earlier said May 31 was the agreed date.

Alternative fuel

Iran, the world's fourth largest crude oil exporter, has said it wants to construct a network of nuclear power facilities with a capacity of 20,000 MW by 2020 to enable it to export more of its oil and gas.

Saeedi said that in five years' time, the country would produce both nuclear fuel and electricity, without giving details of where the new plant was being built or when it would be completed.