Israel Says Iran Nuclear Plant Unacceptable

Israel said Saturday the fueling of Iran's first nuclear reactor was "totally unacceptable" and urged greater world pressure to force Tehran to cease any uranium enrichment, FOXNews.com reported.

"It is totally unacceptable that a country that so blatantly violates (international treaties) should enjoy the fruits of using nuclear energy," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy said in a statement.

With Russian help, Iranian engineers began loading fuel into the country's first nuclear power plant Saturday, marking a milestone in Tehran's development of what it insists is a peaceful nuclear energy program.

A top Iranian official, however, was quoted saying Iran will continue to enrich uranium on the side -- despite a U.S. warning that Iran does need the enrichment program once the new Bushehr reactor is online if its intentions are indeed peaceful.

"The country's large-scale need to energy is obvious and that is the reason why we want to produce the required fuel ourselves," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency.

He said Iran needs the uranium to supply future power reactors.

Uranium enrichment is one of two paths to a nuclear bomb. Iran could potentially go the plutonium route with its Bushehr reactor, but Moscow has pledged to prevent spent nuclear fuel at the new site from being shifted to a possible weapons program.

The U.S. State Department said it saw no "proliferation risk" from the nuclear reactor.

The Russian involvement in the reactor, intended for civilian purposes, "underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful," State Department spokesman Darby Holladay told AFP.

"We recognize that the Bushehr reactor is designed to provide civilian nuclear power and do not view it as a proliferation risk," he said.

The reactor, said Holladay, is "under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and Russia is providing the needed fuel and taking back the spent nuclear fuel, which would be the principal source of proliferation concerns."

A White House official stressed, however, that U.S. views on the Bushehr reactor "should not be confused with the world's fundamental concerns with Iran's overall nuclear intentions, particularly its pursuit of uranium enrichment."

Iran says it is enriching uranium to power nuclear reactors so they can eventually generate around 20,000 megawatts of electricity.