Iran is to establish a secret nuclear engineering faculty within a year to promote its growing military project, a Western intelligence source told AFP in an exclusive interview here on Sunday. "This is a very significant step towards training an Iranian nuclear cadre," the source said. "The declared purpose for establishing the faculty is to create a source of skilled and professional manpower to promote Iran's military nuclear project, whose activity is increasing."
The allegation comes despite growing pressure on Iran from the United States and the European Union to guarantee that it will not use its atomic energy programme to acquire nuclear weapons.
"The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran has received approval from the regime for the ministry of education to establish a secret faculty of applied nuclear engineering and materiels engineering," the source said.
"The faculty will concentrate only on nuclear topics and will build and train a new generation of engineers, who will be able to immediately work on highly secret projects as soon as they complete their studies."
Tehran says its nuclear activities are peaceful, but experts at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, have found evidence Iran has been involved in production of weapons-grade uranium, according to Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper. AFP's source said Iran would seek to protect the faculty from IAEA scrutiny.
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