President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday said Iran was ready to take the 'final step' in its nuclear programme, as he maintained his defiance in the face of possible UN sanctions against Tehran.
"The enemies of the Iranian people must know that the Iranian people have taken their decision and will resist until the end," the semi-official Mehr agency quoted him as saying in a speech in Baneh in Kurdestan province.
"In the nuclear case we are ready to take the final step and I hope that by the end of the year (Iranian year to March 2007) we will be able to hold the great celebration of Iran's nuclear right," he added.
Ahmadinejad, who has made a string of similar comments in recent days, did not specify where the step would take Iran's nuclear programme.
However Iranian officials have repeatedly said that the short-term goal of Iran's nuclear programme is to install some 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its plant in Natanz by March 2007.
This would in itself represent a massive step from the two cascades of 164 centrifuges apiece it currently has at its Natanz plant to enrich uranium on a research scale.
Ahmadinejad said earlier this week that Iran wanted ultimately to have 60,000 centrifuges working in Natanz, easily enough to enrich uranium to make nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.
Enrichment is carried out in lines of centrifuges called cascades and is used to make the fuel for civilian nuclear reactors. But in highly enriched form, the uranium can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful and that it has every right to the full nuclear fuel cycle, rejecting US accusations that its civilian energy drive masks a programme to make an atomic weapon.
The United States is leading a drive to impose UN sanctions against Iran over its failure to suspend uranium enrichment, but has hit stalemate amid opposition from China and Russia to a European-proposed draft resolution.