Iran says it hopes to eventually have more than 50,000 centrifuges operating at its enrichment plant near the town of Natanz. In April, it said it was on the verge of putting a total of 6,000 centrifuges into operation. Ahmadinejad's comments Saturday were the first public statement asserting an expansion.
"We knew they were heading toward 6,000 assembled," said Jeffrey G. Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation, a think tank. "But there's some dispute as to whether they're running them or not."
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana recently offered the Iranians a U.S.-endorsed package of incentives meant to entice them to stop producing enriched uranium. He also proposed a six-week period of pre-negotiations, called "freeze for freeze," during which Iran would add no centrifuges and the West would refrain from pushing for a fourth round of economic sanctions against it at the U.N. Security Council.
Iran failed to respond to either offer during talks July 19 in Geneva, which were attended by Undersecretary of State William J. Burns in the highest-level diplomatic contact between Tehran and Washington in nearly 30 years.
Solana, Burns and European envoys gave Tehran a deadline of late July to respond to the offer or face a new round of sanctions, which could include prohibitions on selling Iran the refined petroleum products it desperately needs to run its economy.
Iranian officials have decried the deadline and refused to commit to stopping the expansion of the program. But in his latest comments, Ahmadinejad appeared to leave open the possibility that Iran would stop adding centrifuges, though such a freeze would come with a larger number of the devices in place than previously thought, and it would last for longer than the requested six weeks.
"Today they [the West] have agreed that the existing 5,000 to 6,000 centrifuges do not increase and that there is no problem if this number of centrifuges work," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state radio, according to Agence France-Presse.
U.S. officials have repeatedly stated that no negotiations can begin with Iran before it verifiably halts all enrichment-related activities. But the Bush administration recently softened its stance, agreeing to sign on to the "freeze for freeze" proposal and to send Burns to Geneva.
Ahmadinejad's comments also suggested breathing room for a compromise, Lewis said.
"If they were going to accept 'freeze for freeze,' that's kind of promising language," he said. "They're at least leaving the door open."
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daragahi@latimes.com
Daragahi is a Times staff writer and Mostaghim is a special correspondent.
