Iran said on Sunday it was getting ready to resume some uranium enrichment-related work, despite warnings from Washington and the European Union that doing so would see its nuclear case sent to the UN Security Council. Iran, which insists its atomic ambitions are peaceful, is threatening to re-start uranium processing but has promised to maintain its freeze on actual uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make bomb-grade fuel. "We have decided to resume part of our activities in Isfahan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, referring to the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility in central Iran.
"We have still not decided which activities (will be resumed) and when ... We are at a decision-making stage and whether we reach an agreement (with the EU) or not we will do this," he told a weekly news conference.
Hardline lawmakers, who control a majority of seats in Iran's parliament, meanwhile, are threatening to pass a new bill obliging the government to resume uranium enrichment itself.
"It is now time to end the voluntary suspension of our uranium enrichment programme," Alaeddin Broujerdi, head of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told state radio.
"The continuation of negotiations with the EU will have no results except the loss of time ... Parliamentarians are very serious about preserving this right for Iran and believe the government should quickly re-start its nuclear programme," he said.
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