Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says he is concerned with Iran's motivation more than its technical ability to enrich uranium.
The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner told reporters in Saudi Arabia today that Iran was still at the starting stage of creating a uranium enrichment plant and that concerns stem more from its motivation than the scale of production.
'The concern does not only stem from Iran conducting industrial scale production, but it is rather Iran's motivations behind (enriching uranium) before it has nuclear reactors for electric power generation that need enriched uranium', Dr ElBaradei said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced this week that the Islamic republic's controversial uranium enrichment work had reached an 'industrial scale'.
Uranium enrichment is the key sticking point in the stand-off between Iran and the West, because as well as producing nuclear fuel the process in highly extended form can also make the fissile core for an atomic bomb.
Tehran says it is solely aimed at generating energy and that it does not aspire to nuclear weapons.
