Iran said on Monday it would resume uranium enrichment-related activities within days, a move the United States and the European Union have warned would see its nuclear case escalated to the UN Security Council. "We will lift the first stage of our suspension, which is that of our UCF (Uranium Conversion Facility) project in Isfahan, in the next few days," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told a university conference, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Isfahan plant is used to convert raw uranium into a gas that can be fed into enrichment centrifuges for purification into fuel that can be used in nuclear power reactors or, if purified further, into bomb-grade material.
Iran strongly denies US accusations it is trying to build atomic weapons and says its nuclear facilities will only be used as part of a civilian energy programme.
Iran suspended nuclear fuel production in November as a trust-building measure while it tried to negotiate an agreement on the future of its nuclear activities with Britain, France and Germany who are leading the talks on behalf of the EU.
But Tehran officials said after the last round of talks with the EU trio in London last month it felt the negotiations were being dragged out and that it would resume some enrichment-related work.
EU and US officials have said that would see Iran's case sent to the Security Council where Washington is likely to push its argument that Iran's nuclear programme must be halted.
"Iran is fully aware of the implications if they were to start any part of the nuclear fuel cycle," a British official in London said.
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