By IANS
Vienna : Iran has said talks with Russia over the Bushehr nuclear power plant were moving in the positive direction and the two sides have agreed to fix a date for the plant’s commissioning.
Vice-President and chief of Iran Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Reza Aqazadeh termed his Monday meeting with head of Russian Atomic Energy Agency Sergei Kiriyenco as successful.
“We both agreed that exact dates for putting the power plant into operation, and delivery of the fuel for it to Iran was in need of more bilateral work,” Aqazadeh was quoted Tuesday by Irna news agency as saying.
“We have numerous issues with the Russian side, one of which is the Bushehr nuclear power plant,” he told the news agency after meeting the Russian official on the sidelines of the IAEA conference that began here Monday.
Russia Sunday refuted a statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki that fuel for the plant, being built by Russia’s Atomstroyexport in south Iran, was “ready, with the security seal of the IAEA.”
A diplomat in Vienna, where IAEA is headquartered, said the fuel was ready for several years and stored in a plant in Siberia “but the process of sealing by international experts, which is the important step before transporting the fuel to the Bushehr, has not yet taken place.”
Progress on the Bushehr power plant, originally scheduled for commissioning in the first half of the decade, has been halted several times over various problems. Earlier this year, the Russian firm stopped working on the project citing financial disputes, which Iran later said it had resolved.
By the terms of an agreement signed in September 2006, Atomstroyexport was to supply fuel to the plant built with Russian technology in March this year and the plant was scheduled to generate energy from November.
Experts say the completion of the project could be as late as 2008.