Iran will resume building centrifuges

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran will resume building centrifuges for its nuclear program on Tuesday despite international objections, but will continue to hold off enriching uranium, the foreign ministry said Sunday.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said he hopes Iran will reverse its decision, a setback in international attempts to resolve the standoff with Tehran over its nuclear program.

“I hope that this decision is of a temporary nature. I hope it will be reversed,” Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told a news conference in Moscow, where he was attending a conference on nuclear power.

“Iran needs to do the maximum to build confidence after a period of confidence deficit. I look at this whole suspension of enrichment as part of this confidence building,” he said.

Iran had suspended the building of centrifuges, along with the enrichment of uranium, under international pressure, part of the IAEA’s attempts to determine whether Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful or aims to produce weapons, as the United States contends.

Tehran reversed the suspension on construction after the IAEA approved a European-drafted resolution that rebuked Iran for past cover-ups in its nuclear program.

An Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said his country had notified the IAEA that it would resume building centrifuges as of Monday. He invited the IAEA and European countries to monitor the centrifuge construction.

“Concerning building and assembling centrifuges, we declared to the IAEA and Europeans that we will do that according to regulations, under IAEA supervision,” he said at a news conference.

However, he said Tehran will remain committed to suspension of actual uranium enrichment — injecting gas into centrifuges.

Uranium in its natural form contains too low a concentration of fissionable isotopes to be used as fuel for reactors or weapons material and must be put through an enrichment process.

The United States accuses Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran maintains its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, geared toward production of nuclear energy.

“Iran needs to come clean and fully cooperate with its international obligations,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Sunday.

“Iran’s continued failure to comply with the IAEA and continued failure to (halt) all enrichment-related reprocessing activities only reinforces the concerns we have expressed,” he added. “It runs counter to the commitment Iran has made to the international community.”

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called Iran’s nuclear program a “very tough situation” but “one that still has a diplomatic solution within sight.”