Posted on 03/27/2002 1:24:08 PM PST by RCW2001
Wed Mar 27, 7:35 AM ET
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW - Russia will complete construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran despite U.S. complaints and is looking at North Korea (news - web sites)'s tentative request for a similar plant, the top Russian nuclear official said Wednesday.
The United States has long urged Russia to abandon a 1995 contract with Iran to complete a nuclear reactor at Bushehr worth about dlrs 800 million, saying the project could help Iran build a nuclear bomb. Russia says the reactor could only be used for civilian purposes and will remain under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The controversy over Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran and U.S. claims that Russian companies have leaked missile technologies to Tehran remains a major irritant in U.S.-Russian relations.
Rumyantsev insisted that the nuclear cooperation with Iran posed no threat of proliferation. He said that a new law passed by the Russian parliament last year strengthened non-proliferation guarantees by allowing spent fuel from nuclear power plants abroad taken back to Russia for reprocessing.
"We will ship nuclear fuel to Iran under the contract which envisages that the spent fuel will be taken back to Russia," Rumyantsev said. "There has been no other cooperation that could help Iran build nuclear weapons."
On a conciliatory note, he added that Russia was viewing the U.S. concerns with "great attention" and voiced hope for a "compromise that would help strengthen confidence and peace while allowing Russia to reap economic benefits."
Rumyantsev said Russia would earn about dlrs 500 million a year from a deal with the United States to sell uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons.
But he also said that his ministry was looking at tentative request from North Korea for the construction of a nuclear power plant.
"We are holding discussions and trying to find out whether it would be economically feasible," he said. "But these are only discussions without any specific foundation."
Pyongyang has begun looking into whether Russia could do the job after threatening to opt out of a 1994 agreement with Washington that urged North Korea to freeze Soviet-designed reactors suspected of producing weapons-grade plutonium in exchange for a U.S.-led consortium building two dlrs 4.6 billion light-water reactors in North Korea.
(vi/dgs)
"Russia are our ally. Russia are now our friend"
Oh really? This is how friends and an allies behave? Got Golitsyn?
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