WAR.WIRE
Iran to install 3,000 nuclear centrifuges
TEHRAN, Nov 12 (AFP) Nov 12, 2006
Iran plans to install 3,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment by March 2007 despite international calls to freeze controversial nuclear work, the Iranian foreign ministry said Sunday.

"Iranian officials and experts are seeking to do this," the ministry's spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters, responding to a question as to whether Tehran remains determined to install 3,000 centrifuges by the end of Iranian year in March 2007.

Iran has so far built two cascades of 164 centrifuges for uranium enrichment -- the process used to make nuclear fuel and, in much higher grades, the core of an atom bomb.