MOSCOW:Russia is defending Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear power programme because it has vital interests of its own in doing so, and Moscow will not reverse its position despite US and EU pressure to do so, analysts said Friday.

“Will Russia change course and line up with the West? I think this is not possible,” said Vladimir Yevseyev.

“They will have to find a compromise,” said Yevseyev, coordinator of the nuclear non-proliferation programme with the Carnegie Moscow Centre thinktank, refering to the talks in Vienna.

In the first place, he said, Russia’s support for Iran’s nuclear energy programme is grounded in financial interest: Russia is helping Iran build its first nuclear power station at Bushehr in a contract worth 800 million dollars, money that Russia’s atomic industry says it badly needs.

If ties between Russia and Iran remain on track, that contract will be the tip of an iceberg of lucrative deals for Russian companies in the years ahead, ranging from construction of more nuclear power plants to development of other energy resources in the region.

Perhaps more important in Moscow’s backing for Tehran are Russia’s broader geostrategic interests, which represent some of the highest priorities of the administration of President Vladimir Putin.

“Russia has important political interests here,” Yevseyev said. “Iran is near Turkey and close to the border with Russia. Russia has no interest in having enemies on its borders and wants to have good relations with Iran.”

Russia and Iran also border the energy-rich Caspian Sea region, where both countries have long-standing and common interests ranging from development of oil and gas deposits to caviar harvesting and which the United States now also views as a zone of strategic interest.

“Washington has interests everywhere... and Iran is in a key geographical position here,” Yevseyev said. “It is an important transit region,” notably for Caspian oil and gas in increasing demand in Europe and the United States.

The administration of US President George W. Bush, which has described Iran as one of three states in an international “axis of evil,” has charged that Tehran is using its civilian nuclear power program as camouflage for development of nuclear weapons.

As the chief supplier of nuclear technology to Iran, Russia has scoffed at this assertion, saying it is not only not backed up by evidence of any kind but is technologically impossible with the type of “light water” nuclear reactor that Russia is building there.

Even if Iran were to try to use this reactor to produce an atomic bomb, it is not capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium — unlike the gas-graphite “heavy water” reactors possessed by North Korea, Yevseyev stated.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking to reporters, reiterated Moscow’s position, that while Russia, like the United States, flatly opposed any move by Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it was confident Tehran’s civilian programme did not have this orientation.—AFP