TEHRAN, Feb 16: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travelled on Wednesday to a nuclear plant south of the capital where uranium enrichment resumed this week in defiance of international protests.

“Your goal is to produce nuclear fuel but there is another goal still more precious which is to provide the Iranian people with the feeling, that despite the threats and obstacles, it has accomplished something significant,” the state IRNA news agency quoted Mr Ahmadinejad as telling plant technicians.

“It is not building an atomic bomb that is going to make our enemies scared. The main reason for our foes’ fear is the self-sufficiency and scientific mastery of the Iranian nation.”

Iran announced on Tuesday that it was resuming ‘limited ... research’ at its enrichment facility at Natanz after a voluntary suspension of more than two years.

Enriched uranium can be used as the fuel for nuclear power stations but also, in concentrated form, as the fissile core of an atom bomb. —AFP