Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that his country will soon start producing nuclear fuel for industrial uses, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Iran has access to full nuclear fuel cycle and we will soon push the button on nuclear fuel production for industrial uses," Ahmadinejad told a public gathering in Gatvand in Khuzestan province.

"The Iranians are determined to achieve peaks of success and defend its interests powerfully," he said.

He insisted that all nations, including Iran, deserve to access peaceful nuclear technology and Iranians "call for nothing but their rights."

"The bullying powers are seeking hegemony over the whole world and ... they should give up in the face of the Iranian people and officially recognize our rights," he said.

His remarks showed Iran's latest rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 1737 which was adopted unanimously on Dec. 23, 2006 and imposed sanctions against Iran for its failure to suspend uranium enrichment.

Uranium enrichment at low levels can be used to produce fuel to generate electricity but at higher levels can be used to make atomic bombs. Iran has already claimed that it has enriched uranium to levels of around 5 percent.

Iran said in October that it had assembled a second line, or cascade of 164 centrifuges, and used the units to enrich uranium.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Mostafavi said last month that Iran's first step toward producing nuclear fuel on industrial scale would start during the Ten-Day Dawn celebrations in February.

Iran holds the Ten-Day Dawn celebrations on Feb. 1-10 every year to mark the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian officials have said that Iran plans to install 3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at its enrichment plant in Natanz in central Iran by the end of the current Iranian year, which will end on March 20, 2007.

According to Iran's announced plan, it will eventually have 60,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, says it needs to enrich uranium as a peaceful, alternative energy source and has the right to do so under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

However, the West accuses Iran of trying to produce nuclear weapons under a civilian cover, a charge denied by Tehran.

(Xinhua News Agency January 4, 2007)

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