TEHRAN, Iran – Iran unveiled a third generation of domestically built centrifuges Friday as the country pushes ahead with plans to accelerate a uranium enrichment programme that has alarmed world powers fearful of the nuclear programme's aims. The new machines are capable of much faster enrichment than those now being used in Iran's nuclear facilities, and Iranian officials praised it as a step toward greater self-sufficiency in the face of international sanctions targeted at choking off the nuclear work. "Our capable experts at the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran have managed to design a third-generation centrifuge and it has successfully passed all the mechanical tests," said Ali Akbar Salehi, the nuclear chief. Iran has periodically announced advancements in its efforts to build its own centrifuges, the machines at the core of its disputed nuclear program. The enrichment technology is of concern to the international community because it can be used to generate power or material for nuclear bombs. Iran insists it only wants to generate power, but the United States and its allies suspect the civilian work is a cover for a weapons programme. In a ceremony Friday marking Iran's National Day of Nuclear Technology, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled one of the new machines to a crowd of assembled dignitaries. Iran says it will install more than 50,000 centrifuges at its enrichment facilities in central town of Natanz.
