Iran 6-12 mths from industrial enrichment: IAEA

London, Feb 20: Iran may be as little as six months from being able to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said.

In an interview with Britain's Financial Times, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said intelligence estimates put Iran at least five years from being able to develop nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei is due to issue a report on Wednesday on Iran's compliance with a UN Security Council demand that it halt nuclear fuel work such as uranium enrichment, which could be used to make fissile bomb-grade material.

Iran, which says it has no plans to make atomic weapons, has installed scores of enrichment centrifuges at a pilot facility in a plant near the central Iranian city of Natanz.

ElBaradei told the Financial Times that while concern Iran may acquire the know-how to enrich uranium -- a process that can produce nuclear reactor or bomb-grade fuel -- may have ''been relevant six months ago, it is not relevant today because Iran has been running these centrifuges for at least six months''.

He said Iran could go on to install an industrial scale capacity of 3,000 centrifuges within months.

''It could be six months, it could be a year,'' he said, stressing that the best way to deal with the issue was negotiations.

''The ideal situation is to make sure that there is no industrial capacity, that there is full inspection (of Iran's nuclear facilities),'' he said.

Reuters

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