WASHINGTON – A reported confidential Iranian technical document describing Tehran’s efforts to design an atomic bomb trigger was forged by Washington, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a US news programme on Monday.
Mr Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC News about a Timesof London report last week on what it called a confidential Iranian technical document describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the part of a nuclear warhead that sets off an explosion.
“They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government,” he told the US network in an interview in Copenhagen after he attended the United Nations conference on climate change.
Reports that Iran is working on a bomb trigger are “fundamentally not true”, said Mr Ahmadinejad.
The Timespublished on December 14th what it said was the Farsi-language document, along with an English translation, entitled, Outlook for Special Neutron-Related Activities over the Next Four Years.
The document describes steps to develop and test parts for a neutron initiator, a device that floods the core of highly enriched uranium with subatomic particles to touch off the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion.
Last week, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast called the report “baseless . . . not worthy of attention, intended to put political and psychological pressure on Iran”. Iran, the world’s fifth-largest crude oil exporter, says its uranium enrichment is aimed at generating electricity so it can export more gas and oil. The West believes Iran wants to make bombs because of its record of nuclear secrecy. – (Reuters)