Russia has sent its first shipment of nuclear fuel to the reactor it is helping build in Iran, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Monday.
Russia has sent nuclear fuel to the Bushehr reactor, 1,245 kilometres south of Tehran, a plant that is at the centre of tensions over Iran's atomic ambitions.
(Mehr News Agency/Bagher Nasir/Associated Press)
Tehran contends the Bushehr nuclear power plant operation is strictly for civilian purposes but some countries, including the U.S., fear that Iran could use it to build nuclear weapons.
The plant's construction has been repeatedly delayed, with officials saying it was because of payment disputes.
But observers suggested Russia was unhappy with Iran's resistance to international pressure to make its nuclear program more transparent.
"All fuel that will be delivered will be under the control and guarantees of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the whole time it stays on Iranian territory," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"Moreover, the Iranian side gave additional written guarantees that the fuel will be used only for the Bushehr nuclear power plant."
Iran confirmed it received the shipment, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
"The first nuclear fuel shipment for the Bushehr atomic power plant arrived in Iran Monday," IRNA quoted Iranian Vice-President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh as saying.
The fuel delivery comes six months before Bushehr is expected to go into service.
Two weeks ago, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate report concluded that Iran had halted efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2003 and they remained frozen until at least the middle of 2007.
With files from the Associated PressRelated
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