Russia says launch of Iran nuclear plant delayed

2009/11/16

A controversial nuclear power plant that Russia is building in Iran will not start operations by the end of 2009 as previously announced, a top Russian official said on Monday.

“We expect serious results by the end of the year, but the launch itself will not take place,” Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said, quoted by the Interfax and RIA-Novosti news agencies. In July the chief of Russian state nuclear company Rosatom had said the power plant, located in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr, would go into service by the end of 2009.

Russia has pressed ahead with the Bushehr project despite Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear energy programme, which the United States and its allies fear is aimed at acquiring an atomic bomb.

Tehran denies that it is seeking to build atomic weapons and insists that its nuclear energy programme is peaceful in nature. The Bushehr announcement came a day after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow was “not completely happy” with the pace of efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff.

However Shmatko described the delay as technical and said the project would go forward. “Russia, as before, is certain that it will fulfill all its obligations to Iran,” the energy minister said.

“The Iranians see how this (construction) is going, and they do not have any complaints to us.” Russia, as a permanent, veto-holding member of the United Nations Security Council, is seen as central to efforts to impose stricter sanctions on Iran if negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programme fail to defuse tensions.

Russia has long resisted calls for tougher sanctions against Iran, but in recent weeks Moscow has urged Tehran to quit dragging its feet on agreeing a UN-drafted uranium enrichment deal seen as a possible way out of the standoff. -- AFP