GENEVA: Russia’s plans to intensify non-military nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite plea by the US government to end it, has strained Moscow-Washington ties. The move also underlines President Vladimir Putin’s determination to pursue Russia’s national interests, even if that should irk President George W. Bush.

A case in point is Russian Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev four-day visit to Tehran last month. Referring to his meeting with the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam Reza Agazadeh, Rumyantsev announced in Moscow that Iran’s 1,000-megawatt Bushehr Nuclear-Power Reactor (BNPR) would become operational in December 2003.

Rumyantsev, whose ministry is interested in building at least six more nuclear power reactors in Iran, denied the US government’s allegations on Iran’s clandestine efforts to create “nuclear weapons or develop sensitive nuclear technologies.”

“Iran has signed all required international agreements and undertaken full obligations on transparency and checks ... and (has) unfailingly fulfilled them,” Rumyantsev said in Moscow.

The timing of Rumyantsev’s Tehran visit was remarkable. The visit took place about two weeks after Washington’s uproar about Iran’s nuclear facilities in Arak and Natanz allegedly used for its nuclear-weapon project and supposedly established with Russia’s assistance.

These accusations have been rejected by both Iran and Russia on the ground that the reactor’s specifications and its being under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection regime remove the possibility of its use for military purposes.

Energy minister Rumyantsev reiterated this point as he remarked in Moscow: “Iran is using nuclear energy exclusively for peaceful purposes. there are no programmes to create nuclear weapons or develop sensitive nuclear technologies.”

To allay the US government fear of the possible use for nuclear-weapon production of the BNPR’s used nuclear fuel, Iran and Russia have agreed in principle to transfer it to Russia.

According to Rumyantsev, an official agreement on that matter would be signed in January as the Russian Foreign Ministry was analysing the text of the proposed agreement.

Being built in Iran’s Persian Gulf port of Bushehr, the $800 million BNPR has been a source of conflict between Russia and the United States since the early 1990s when the former agreed to finish it.

Prior to the Iranian revolution of 1979, a German company, Siemens, began the reactor project but refused to finish it after the revolution. The Iranian government revitalized the Bushehr project in the early 1990s when the massive destruction of the Iranian infrastructure as a result of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and the rapid growth of the Iranian population created a severe shortage of electricity.

In the absence of any interested Western contractor to finish the BNPR damaged during the Iraqi air strikes in the 1980s, Iran turned to Russia, whose severe economic problems made it very interested in obtaining that lucrative project. Moscow’s common views with Iran on certain regional and international issues and its friendly ties with Tehran made it a desirable contractor for the Iranians.

The BNPR is only a first major project for the Russians who, over the last few years, have reiterated their interest in expanding their non-military nuclear ties with Iran. Having lost most of the markets of their friends and allies when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, their failure to secure access to other markets have since inclined them to expand economic relations with those few countries, which, because of economic imperatives and/or political considerations, are interested in such relations.

As a rich neighbouring country with friendly ties with Russia, Iran has become one of its major economic partners. In particular, its increasing need for power generation has created, and will continue to create, a lucrative growing market for Russia’s nuclear power reactors.

Unsurprisingly, Russia is trying to receive more contracts for constructing such reactors from the Iranians who are planning to generate 6,000 megawatts of nuclear power over the next 10 years.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.