Iran promised to meet today’s deadline for suspending a uranium enrichment process that could be used for making nuclear weapons – a freeze that could spare it UN Security Council sanctions. “We will start suspension of uranium enrichment activities from tomorrow on (editor’s note: Nov. 22), as we promised”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.

Iranian officials have shrugged off concern – voiced again by US President George W. Bush on Saturday – over reports of Tehran accelerating uranium enrichment before the deadline. “We’re concerned about reports that show that prior to a certain international meeting, they’re willing to speed up processing of materials that could lead to a nuclear weapon”, Bush told reporters in Chile on Saturday.

On November 14 Iran promised the European Union’s “big three” – France, Germany and Britain – that it would freeze enrichment by November 22 to try to ease concern it was pursuing nuclear weapons and escape a referral to the Security Council by the UN nuclear watchdog. The 35-member board of the watchdog group – the International Atomic Energy Agency – meets in Vienna on Thursday.

Asefi emphasised the suspension was temporary and voluntary. Oil-rich Iran insists its plans are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity. With nuclear chief Hassan Rohani, they also rejected outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertions Tehran had been working on ways to deliver an atomic warhead on a missile. “I believe Powell has understood his remarks were false. Such claims are totally baseless”, Rohani told state television.

Tehran has been developing a medium-range ballistic missile experts say would be able to hit Israel, Iran’s arch-foe. Asefi shrugged off accusations by a group of Iranian exiles that Tehran was running secret centrifuge and laser uranium enrichment facilities in Tehran for atomic weapons. “We have peaceful nuclear activities ... There are no secret activities”, he said

Amir PAIVAR