Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN (Reuters):

Iran's nuclear work is nearing a 'peak', President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday, while the U.N. atomic watchdog chief said Tehran was probably at least three years from making atom bombs even if it chose to do so.

Ahmadinejad dismissed Western pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear drive. "With God's help the path to completely enjoying all nuclear capacity is near its end, and we are close to the peak," he told a rally in the central town of Isfahan.

"The Iranian nation today has industrial nuclear technology and ... it will never retreat even one step from this path."

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, as the West suspects, saying its programme aims purely to generate electricity.

Major confrontation

Underlining what he called the growing risk of a major confrontation between the West and Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei appealed for the two sides to restart negotiations on a compromise as soon as possible.

"I tend, based on our analysis, to agree with people like John Negroponte and the new director of the CIA, who are saying that even if Iran wanted to go for a nuclear weapon, it would not be before the end of this decade or sometime in the middle of the next decade. In other words three to eight years from now," ElBaradei told a news conference in Luxembourg.