TEHRAN, 20 February 2004 — Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied “in the strongest possible terms” yesterday reports from diplomats at the UN’s nuclear watchdog that components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge had been found by international inspectors at a military base here.
“The reports that there are centrifuges of this type in a military base are without any basis or foundation and we deny them in the strongest possible terms,” spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.
Asefi asserted that Iran’s research into advanced centrifuges was “a purely scientific project”, in other words only the subject of research, and that such centrifuges had “never been put into service”.
“There is no nuclear activity and no centrifuges of this type in any military bases,” he insisted, asserting that the country had “never carried out any nuclear activity for military purposes.”
Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna said earlier in the day that UN teams in Iran had found components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge of a type Tehran had failed to declare while claiming to provide full disclosure on its atomic program.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said inspectors had found “design components of a G-2 centrifuge,” an advanced model of what is the crucial machine used in configurations of hundreds of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium for either civilian power use or for making an atomic bomb.
The diplomats were confirming a report in the newspaper USA Today.
