The White House has said it is 'very concerned' about Iran's annoucement today that it has entered the industrial stage of its nuclear programme.

Iran announcement that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, is a dramatic expansion of a nuclear programme that has drawn United Nations sanctions and condemnation from the West.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at the enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was now capable of enriching nuclear fuel “on an industrial scale.”

Asked if Iran has begun injecting uranium gas into 3,000 centrifuges for enrichment, the country's leading nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, replied, “Yes”. He did not elaborate, but it was the first confirmation that Iran had installed the larger set of centrifuges after months of saying it intends to do so. Until now, Iran was only known to have 328 centrifuges operating.

Uranium enrichment can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material for a nuclear warhead. The United States and its allies accuse Iran of intending to produce weapons, a charge the country denies.

The announcement brought quick condemnation from the United States and Europe. In Washington, the State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Iran’s actions are the reason the UN Security Council and the UN nuclear watchdog “don’t believe Iran’s assurances that their [nuclear] programme is peaceful in nature.”

The move showed Iran was “definitively going in the wrong direction,” said the Foreign Ministry in Germany, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union.

American experts said 3,000 centrifuges was enough to produce a nuclear weapon but said were sceptical of Iran’s claims, saying they had strong doubts Iran really had the capability to operate so many devices, a highly complicated process. “I don’t believe they have 3,000 up and running in any reasonable sense,” said Michael Levi, a nonproliferation expert at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

The United Nations has vowed to increase sanctions as long as Iran refuses to suspend enrichment. The Security Council first imposed limited sanctions in December, then increased them slightly last month and has set a new deadline of late May.

Iranian state television reported today that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who is under travel restrictions urged by the sanctions has visited Russia without any difficulty. General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, who is also deputy interior minister for security affairs, was quoted on the state television website as saying that his six-day journey to Moscow, which ended today, showed “the ineffectiveness of the resolution”.

The resolution urges all governments to ban visits by 15 individuals and says that should such visits occur, presumably for exceptional circumstances, the countries should notify a UN committee.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei Krivtsov, confirmed that General Zolqadr visited Russia. He told the Associated Press that the resolution does not prohibit visits by the listed individuals but calls for heightened vigilance “directed first of all at people who are directly related to nuclear programmes", suggesting that General Zolqadr was not.

In his speech, President Ahmadinejad insisted Iran has been cooperative with the UN nuclear watchdog, allowing it inspections of its facilities, but he warned, “Don’t do something that will make this great nation reconsider its policies" in a reference to the threat of increased UN sanctions.

Mr Larijani said his country was willing to offer assurances that its programme is peaceful. But he said the West must accept its nuclear programme as a fact. “We are ready to reach understanding with the Westerners through a corridor of real negotiations, in the current situation, in which Iran’s nuclear activities have

been concluded,” state television quoted him as saying. “The understanding regards assuring the other party about the peacefulness of Iran’s nuclear activities. But we do not give in our rights.”

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