Iran halts building nuclear equipment

Iran will stop building and assembling centrifuges for uranium enrichment this week, the country’s nuclear chief said today after a meeting with the chief UN weapons inspector.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said the country would “voluntarily” suspend its centrifuge work starting on April 9.

Iran “is interested as quickly as possible to bring this case to a close,” he said.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, welcomed the announcement and said a new team of inspectors would go to Tehran on April 12 to verify that all uranium enrichment activities had been completely halted.

ElBaradei arrived in Tehran to meet with Iran’s president and top Iranian officials in an effort to press the regime for greater openness with its suspect nuclear programmes.