Thaindian News

Moscow, Jan 14 (IANS) Iran is confident that Russia will fulfil its commitment of building its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran’s envoy to Russia has said.”Iran did not believe that the Russian side has deliberately delayed completion of the 1,000-MW power plant in Bushehr,” Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi told a Russian newspaper, the IRNA news agency reported.

As per the agreement between Iran and Russia, the power plant was to become operational by the end of 2008. But its construction delayed following differences between the two sides over the issues of payment and supply of fuel.

“However, this was not only the fault of the Russian side, but some countries that should produce equipment of the power plants have sometimes failed to fulfil their commitments,” the ambassador told Russian newspaper Zavtra Online.

He also criticised the West for putting pressure on Russia not to cooperate with Iran in developing the power plant.

The diplomat also said Iran would build more nuclear power plants to help generate electricity and dismissed US allegations that the Islamic country was trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of the power plants.

“Producing nuclear weapons has no place in Iran’s defensive doctrine,” Sajjadi said.

Referring to Iran’s complete cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the ambassador said that the nuclear watchdog’s inspectors had “free access” to Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities and the agency was fully informed of their activities.