President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran's plan to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants was not aimed at confronting the UN atomic watchdog, which censured Tehran last month, the state television website reported. He also said Iran will continue to build the new plants, adding that sites for five of the 10 units had been finalised.
"The news that we announced (about the new plants) was not to confront the board of the agency, as we had assigned the (Iranian) atomic energy organisation to locate several sites (for the new plants) months ago," the website quoted him as saying.