Iran offers US share in N-power plants

TEHERAN — Iran opened the door yesterday for US help in building a nuclear power plant — a move designed to ease American suspicions that Teheran is using its nuclear programme as a cover to build atomic weapons.

The offer, which did not seem likely to win acceptance in Washington, was issued as Israel said it had not ruled out a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

“America can take part in international bidding for the construction of Iran’s nuclear power plant if they observe the basic standards and quality,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a news conference.

Asefi was apparently talking about a 360-megawatt light water nuclear power plant that the head of the country’s atomic organisation said on Saturday would be constructed in southwestern Iran.

Iran also wants to produce 2,000 megawatts of electricity by building nuclear power plants with foreign help in southern Iran.

While it was unclear how the Americans would react to the Iranian proposal, relations between Tehran and Washington, which were severed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, have seldom been worse. The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, preventing US companies from doing business in Iran.

In Washington, neither the State Department nor the White House issued any comment on the proposal.

The United States also has ratcheted up pressure against Iran, accusing it of pursuing a nuclear weapons program and supporting anti-Israeli militants.