The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, London

Iran would be wrong to believe it will be "off the hook" over its disputed nuclear program during the transition to a new U.S. administration, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

"One thing we all have to worry about is t that somehow the Iranian leadership may think they are off the hook for a period of time," said Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

"What they need to understand through our considered diplomacy is that they are not off the hook," he told reporters.

He was responding to a question about whether pressure on Iran over its nuclear program could ease between the election of a new U.S. president in November and his inauguration next January.

The West says Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing bombs, while Tehran says it is for generating electricity.

Talks in Geneva ended in stalemate last Saturday with six major powers giving Iran two weeks to answer calls to rein in its nuclear program or face tougher sanctions.

"Six more months of Security Council violations is not going to put them (Iran) in any greater favor with any future U.S. president," Schulte said.

"Part of the strategy is to keep them on the hook, but also to make sure that, if we don't get a negotiated outcome, that the next administration, whoever is president, is in the strongest diplomatic position possible to continue work on this," he said.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said Washington could not accept a nuclear-armed Iran and backs tougher sanctions against Tehran. He also supports military action if Iran poses a "real threat" to Israel.

Democrat Barack Obama says keeping Iran free of nuclear weapons would be a top priority and he would respond forcefully to an Iranian attack against Israel or any other U.S. ally.

The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany have offered Iran economic and other incentives in return for suspending uranium enrichment.

But Iran's top nuclear negotiator insisted in Geneva Tehran would not discuss a demand to freeze uranium enrichment.

AP adds: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Iran now possesses 6,000 centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

The new figure is double the 3,000 centrifuges Iran had previously said it was operating in its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

"Islamic Iran today possesses 6,000 centrifuges," Fars quoted Ahmadinejad as telling university professors in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

In April, Ahmadinejad said Iran had begun installing 6,000 centrifuges at Natanz. His reported comments Saturday provided the first public assertion that Iran has reached that goal.

The announcement is another act of defiance in the face of demands by the United States and other world powers for Iran to halt its enrichment work, which Washington and its allies fear Iran is intent on using to develop weapons.

A report by the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency delivered to the Security Council in May said Iran had 3,500 centrifuges, although a senior U.N. official said at the time that Iran's goal of 6,000 machines running by the summer was "pretty much plausible."

Uranium can be used as nuclear reactor fuel or as the core for atomic warheads, depending on the degree of enrichment. Iran says it is interested in enrichment only for its nuclear power program.

The workhorse of Iran's enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.