Iran Says West Alarm over Nuclear Plant 'Politically Motivated'

Western expressions of alarm over uranium enrichment just started at a new underground plant in Iran are "politically motivated," the Iranian envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday.

"These reactions are exaggerated and politically motivated and have been made over previous years," Ali Asghar Soltanieh was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

He was commenting on Western reaction to the International Atomic Energy Agency's confirmation on Monday that Iran had begun enriching uranium to up to 20 percent level in its new Fordo plant -- a fortified bunker sunk into a mountain southwest of Tehran.

The United States said the activity was "a further escalation of their (the Iranians') ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations," while Britain called it "provocative" and France said it was a "particularly grave violation by Iran of international law."

But Soltanieh said the installation at Fordo was revealed two years ago and documented.

He stressed that the IAEA had 24-hour cameras set up inside and visits by inspectors to monitor all nuclear activity there.

Soltanieh renewed Tehran's insistence that the 20-percent uranium from Fordo would be used for "peaceful and humanitarian" purposes in a Tehran research reactor, which produces radioactive isotopes for cancer treatment.