Last Friday, IRNA reported that Iran has installed 492 new centrifuges at its sensitive Natanz nuclear facility.

"Three new cascades of 164 centrifuges are installed and now operational in the Natanz facility," the report quoted an unnamed official as saying.

"The centrifuges are P-1 type," the official added. The P-1 machine is an old design to produce enriched uranium.

Just days ago, Ahmadinejad had said his country tested a new advanced centrifuge which is "smaller" but whose capacity "is five times greater than the current machines (P-1)".

Iran already has about 3,000 centrifuges in Natanz, and the new announcement showed Iran's latest defiance of international demands to halt its nuclear enrichment work.

The upcoming talks in Shanghai are expected to focus on whether to enhance a package of political, security and economic incentives offered to Iran in 2006 along with further sanctions to punish Tehran's defiance.

Since December 2006, the UN Security Council has imposed three sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activities.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, suggested that Iran wanted compensation for damage caused by these sanctions, saying any negotiations should include "the manner of compensating" the country.

"Any package that would not guarantee the Islamic Republic of Iran's rights or that might undermine or limit Iran's rights would not be accepted by Iran," he told a weekly news conference in Tehran.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu has said at a press conference that China always supports the peaceful solution of the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation.

She called on the involving parties to show their creativity, flexibility in an effort to find appropriate ways for a "comprehensive and long-lasting settlement" of the nuclear issue.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2008)