Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defiantly announced the ultimate aim of Iran's atomic drive was to install 60,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel. Iran has said it is looking to install 3,000 centrifuges by March 2007, in itself a massive step from the two cascades of 164 centrifuges apiece it has currently at its Natanz plant to enrich uranium on a research scale.
Experts say that 50,000 centrifuges would normally be sufficient to produce 20 kilos (44 pounds) of weapons grade uranium in under a month. Enrichment is carried out in lines of centrifuges called cascades and is used to make the fuel for civilian nuclear reactors. But in highly enriched form, the uranium can be used to make a nuclear bomb. Building tens of thousands of centrifuges would take Iran's enrichment program to a level where it could produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.
Ahmadinejad has also pledged that he would soon send "a message to the American nation." He did not say when and through which channel he would send the message but claimed that the people of the U.S. had asked him to explain the Iranian standpoints to them.
Ahmadinejad's predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, had also sent a message in 1998 to the American people onn CNN which, however, did not lead to any improvement of bilateral ties. Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush which however - like his letter to German Chancellor Angel Merkel - remained unanswered.
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