Iran says installing 6,000 enrichment centrifuges

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has started to install 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday, an expansion of nuclear work the West fears is aimed at building bombs.

Diplomats in Vienna told Reuters last week that Tehran was installing advanced enrichment centrifuges at the underground Natanz facility, accelerating activity that could give Iran the means to make atom bombs in the future if it chose to.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, says it wants nuclear technology to generate electricity.

"President Ahmadinejad has announced the start of the installation of 6,000 new centrifuges at Natanz," state radio said. State television carried a similar report.

"Today we have started the installation of 6,000 new centrifuges ... I will announce more achievements tonight," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying at Natanz in central Iran, surrounded by anti-aircraft guns.

The president will give a speech later on Tuesday in a ceremony in Tehran to celebrate Iran's National Day of Nuclear Technology.

Ahmadinejad's announcement is a new snub to the U.N. Security Council which since late 2006 has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Tehran for refusing to halt enrichment work.

A senior nuclear official told Reuters Ahmadinejad had also inspected a "new generation" of centrifuges built by Iranian scientists at a research facility at Natanz.