Iran said on Tuesday it has launched its first home-built satellite into orbit, in a move likely to further alarm an international community already at odds with Tehran over its nuclear drive. "Dear Iranians, your children have put the first indigenous satellite into orbit," a jubilant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television after a launch coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
"With this launch the Islamic Republic of Iran has officially achieved a presence in space," he said. Iran's Omid (Hope) satellite was sent into space on Monday evening carried by the home-built Safir-2 space rocket, local news agencies reported.
In the first international reaction to the launch, France expressed concern because, it said, the technology used was "very similar" to that employed in ballistic missiles. "We can't but link this to the very serious concerns about the development of military nuclear capacity," French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said in Paris.
The launch comes at time when Iran is defiantly refusing UN Security Council demands to freeze sensitive nuclear work. The West suspects Iran of secretly trying to build an atomic bomb and fears the technology used to launch a space rocket could be diverted into development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Iran vehemently denies the charges, saying its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy purposes and that it has the right to the technology already in the hands of many other nations including its archfoe the United States. Ahmadinejad said the satellite carried a message of "peace and brotherhood" to the world and dismissed suggestions that Iran's space programme had military goals.