Iran has given Russia control over the long-stalled construction of a nuclear reactor in Bushehr and asked Russia to submit plans for building three more nuclear reactors at the controversial plant, the nuclear power minister said Wednesday.
The moves drew criticism from the United States and Israel, which have long pressured Russia to abandon the Bushehr project, saying it could help Iran develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has two small research reactors, but the 1,000-megawatt lightwater reactor at Bushehr, a Gulf port, would be Iran's first reactor powerful enough to produce plutonium, which is used in nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov defended the deal agreed to Tuesday in Iran. He repeated Moscow's insistence that the plant is purely for peaceful purposes and accused Washington of applying a double standard in assessing cooperation in nuclear technology with third countries.
"The building of a nuclear plant does not strengthen nuclear potential," Adamov said at a news conference in Moscow.
He said the West was hypocritical in that it showed no such concern when Israel and Pakistan were provided with technical assistance in the nuclear sphere. Pakistan, however, carried out nuclear tests earlier this year.
Under the new agreement, Russia will take complete responsibility and control over completion of the first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, a shift from the original 1995 arrangement that left Iran in charge of some of the construction work. But progress has been slow and by giving Russia control the intention is to speed up the work.
Adamov said Iran also asked Russia to prepare technical documentation for three additional nuclear reactors. This could bring Russia a much needed $3 billion to $4.5 billion, he said.
The current deal is expected to bring Russia $800 million, while providing work for Russian nuclear power plant construction companies that found themselves with no work after most Russian nuclear power expansion plans were cancelled due to the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster and then a lack of funds after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Currently, nearly 1,000 specialists are working at Bushehr. Many of them are Iranians, Adamov said. Russia has received $50 million for the work completed on the project so far.
The power plant is supposed to be complete within 52 months after the technical details are ironed out, Mohammed Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization was quoted as saying.
The U.S. State Department said that it had received no details of the discussions between Adamov and Iranian officials this week, but that the United States remained "opposed to any cooperation with Iran's nuclear sector."
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Russia's plans.
"The building of a nuclear reactor in Iran only makes it likelier that Iran will equip its ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads," Netanyahu told Israeli public radio Tuesday.
But Russian officials said the concerns were groundless.
"Iran today is not ready scientifically or technologically to build nuclear weapons," said Viktor Mikhailov, the first deputy nuclear power minister who until earlier this year headed the ministry and has been involved in Russian-Iranian nuclear cooperation from the beginning. "Perhaps, if such programs were adopted, it would take them 10, 15 or maybe even 20 years."
Mikhailov insisted that Iran, which is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has no desire to build nuclear weapons.
Russian independent experts, however, have said that Iran has long eyed Russian nuclear weapons technologies and there have been several "inappropriate contacts" between Iranian firms and Russian military research facilities.
The United States has provided Russia with the names of firms suspected of transferring sensitive technologies to Iran and other countries seen as rogue states. But no illegal dealings have been proven by Russian authorities.
"Put the concrete information on the table or sack your agents, because if politicians make statements that I can say are lies, it means that intelligence is setting them up," Adamov said in reference to the U.S. and Israeli allegations.
Mikhailov said that transfer of nuclear civilian technology did not run counter to international non-proliferation treaties. Besides, he added, military nuclear programs should be cut short by international organizations, not by any single country.
The Nuclear Power Ministry has been aggressively promoting Russian nuclear power technology on the world market. In 1997, the ministry generated $2.2 billion in exports and hopes to increase that to $3 billion by 2000, Mikhailov said. Russia has agreements to build nuclear power plants in China and India.
Russia plans to sell Iran nuclear fuel and take the spent fuel for reprocessing, he said. Russian law bans accepting radioactive waste from other countries, allowing spent fuel to be brought in only on the condition that it and the waste generated during its processing would be returned to the original country. The ministry hotly objects to this restriction.
Russia sees its cooperation with Iran in high technologies as crucial, hoping to stake out its position on the Iranian market before the political relationship between Iran and the United States improves and Western companies move into the market, said Ivan Safranchuk, researcher with the Moscow-based PIR Center, which studies military and nuclear issues.
Construction of the Bushehr plant was started by the German company Siemens but abandoned when Western companies withdrew from Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Originally, U.S., German and French companies planned to build 32 reactors in Iran, Mikhailov said. Siemens nearly completed the reactor's concrete shell, but it has to be altered to fit Russian equipment. The structure also suffered during the Iran-Iraq war.
Russia plans to build a VVER-1000 reactor at the Bushehr plant. If Russia goes ahead with the construction of three more reactors they would likely be VVER-640 reactors, the Nuclear Power Ministry said.
The original deal to complete the plant was signed by Russian and Iran in 1995.
In another agreement the same year, Russia promised to assist Iran in developing its civilian nuclear technologies. The agreement covered the education of Iranian specialists, construction of uranium mines and facilities for uranium enrichment.