Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505150101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: TEHRAN, IRAN LENGTH: Medium
The official, Reza Amrollahi, also said that last year he signed a formal contract with China for two nuclear power reactors and that Chinese experts had completed a feasibility study and had begun to draw up blueprints and engineering reports for a site in southern Iran.
Iran has already made a ``down payment'' for the project, which will cost $800 million to $900 million and involve training by Chinese experts, said Amrollahi, director of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.
Although the United States has doubted that China is capable of building the reactors on its own because the original model included parts from Germany and Japan, Amrollahi said the Chinese now believed that they had successfully duplicated the technology.
The United States has led a global campaign to prevent Iran from receiving any nuclear technology because of its suspected weapon program. Amrollahi's statements suggest that the agreement with China is much further along than was previously known, and that Iran is planning a vast long-range nuclear energy program.
They seem certain to strengthen the conviction both within the Clinton administration and Congress that Iran is determined to become a nuclear power.
In addition to its oil reserves, Iran has the second-largest natural gas reserves in the world, and natural gas is much cheaper to develop than nuclear energy.
That makes U.S. officials suspicious that Iran wants nuclear power as part of a weapon program.
In a clear attempt to answer charges that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, Amrollahi made his remarks in a 21/2-hour interview at his agency's new six-story building. It is part of a sprawling complex in central Tehran that includes a small nuclear research reactor built for Iran by the United States in the late 1960s, when the monarchy was in power and the relationship with Washington was close.
Officials offered a brief tour of the complex, including a visit to two radio isotope laboratories for medical research, although they did not allow a tour of the reactor.
``In case we get enough money, in case we have enough trained people, we have a plan to take 20 years to get 20 percent of our energy from nuclear,'' Amrollahi said. Asked whether that could mean about 10 reactors, he said, ``Something like that.'' That number is higher than the several reactors that Iran had previously been known to be planning.
Amrollahi reiterated that Iran had already invested $6 billion in the project - which is subject to international inspection and safeguards - and wanted to finish it.
He said the contract with Moscow consists of a $780 million deal in which Russia will complete one of two reactors that a German firm was building at the southern port city of Bushehr before the project was halted after the 1979 revolution. If that project goes well, Russia will finish the second reactor.
Amrollahi said that 150 Russian nuclear experts were already working at the site and that 500 eventually would be based there; a much smaller number of Iranians will be trained in Russia on how to operate the plant, he added. ``Training people is part of that nuclear power plan,'' he said. ``I don't know why they make such a hot fudge of it.''
by CNB