Iran Announces Nuclear Fuel Work ahead of Crunch Talks

Iran on Tuesday announced it was loading domestically produced, 20-percent enriched uranium fuel into its Tehran reactor, underlining its atomic progress on the eve of crucial talks with six world powers in Baghdad.

Two nuclear plates were delivered to the research reactor and "one of them was loaded into the core," the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a statement carried by state media.

The delivery was made possible after "the latest successful attempt by our experts," it added.

Tehran has stressed it is determined to forge ahead with its nuclear activities despite increasingly tough sanctions from the West aimed at choking Iran's economy, especially its all-important oil exports.

The announcement came as Iranian negotiators prepared to face off with representatives from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, the so-called P5+1, in Baghdad on Wednesday over its nuclear agenda.

The Baghdad meeting marks the second round of talks between Iran and world powers which were revived in April in Istanbul after a 15-month impasse.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are purely civilian, ridiculing Western suspicions over a possible military dimension to the program.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in February unveiled Iran's first domestically produced nuclear fuel for the research reactor.