Iran on Friday denied claims by opposition groups that it was secretly building a new uranium enrichment site deep in the mountains north-west of the capital. "We have no such installation that enriches uranium and if they (opposition groups) are aware of such a development, they should tell us. We will thank them," the country's atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the Mehr news agency.
"No such nuclear installation with a specific definition exists in Iran which has not been declared to the agency," he said of UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iranian opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said on Thursday in Washington that in 2005 Iran began building a new uranium enrichment site in Abyek, about 120 kilometres (70 miles) north-west of Tehran. Iran is currently enriching uranium in the central city of Natanz and is building another such facility at Fordo, south-west of the capital. Salehi said that nuclear installations have specific purposes. "Facilities which are used for medical and agriculture purposes are not considered nuclear. There are many such (non-nuclear) facilities in Iran," he said.