Ahmadinejad Sees Nuclear Energy in Iran by 2009

New York Times - United States

TEHRAN — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said Wednesday that his country would produce nuclear energy by next year and condemned Israel as a “filthy entity” that would soon collapse.

He spoke as the United Nations Security Council considered imposing new sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment activities.

“We have been promised that we will have nuclear power this time next year in our power grid,” the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying in a speech in Bushehr, the southern city where Iran is building its first nuclear power plant.

A senior official speaking in Tehran gave reporters more precise information and said the Bushehr plant was expected to be operational in October.

The official, Ahmad Fayazbakhsh, managing director of the Production and Development of Nuclear Energy Company, said the date for the plant’s electricity to join the national power grid would be announced after the commissioning, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Russia is helping Iran to build the plant and made the eighth and final delivery of its nuclear fuel this week.

However, the leader of the Russian company building the plant, the state-run Atomstroyexport, has said the plant will not be operational until the end of 2008, Reuters reported.

Mr. Fayazbakhsh also said Iran was building a 360-megawatt nuclear power plant in Darkhovein, in the southern Khuzestan Province, without help from any foreign contractors. IRNA quoted him as saying that the plant was expected to become operational in 2017, adding that it was still in the stage of “basic planning,” which would continue until October 2010.

Some Western countries and Israel have accused Iran of having a clandestine nuclear weapons program under the guise of a civilian nuclear program. Iran contends that its program is for peaceful purposes and will produce fuel for its nuclear plants.

In his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad renewed his attack on Israel and warned Western nations to stop supporting it. “I warn you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity, which has reached the end of the line,” he said.

“It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall,” he said. “The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers’ days are numbered,” he said, adding that the countries that support Israel share responsibility in crimes against Palestinians.