"There has been an agreement with the Russians. Let me not give a precise date, but we will see the commissioning of the plant in spring," Salehi said, referring to the Bushehr plant, quoted by Fars news agency.

He said a penultimate test was successfully carried out last Sunday.

The head of the Russian Federal Agency of Atomic Energy (Rosatom), Sergei Kiriyenko, had said on January 21 that the Bushehr plant would be commissioned in 2010.

Completion of the plant has been delayed repeatedly amid Western concerns that Iran's nuclear programme masks the building of atomic weapons, a charge denied by Tehran.

Siemens of Germany initially started work on the Bushehr plant before Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, but it was interrupted early in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and Moscow took over construction in 1994.

Salehi's latest announcement on Bushehr came the same day as he declared Iran has started work on enriching uranium to 20 percent level, defying world powers who have warned of tough new sanctions on Tehran.

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