DAR AL ISLAM - IRAN: SIX MONTHS AWAY FROM MASS NUCLEAR ENRICHMENT

Iran 6 months from mass nuclear enrichment

ElBaradei says Iran has learned so much from its pilot programme that it will be impossible to turn clock back.

LONDON - Iran may be able to enrich uranium on a mass scale in just six months, but it could still be 10 years away from the capacity to build a nuclear bomb, the chief UN monitor said in remarks published Monday.

Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the Financial Times that since August Iran has been using centrifuges at a pilot plant in the town of Natanz to enrich uranium.

The UN watchdog believes that Iran could set up an industrial scale capacity of 3,000 centrifuges within the next 12 months. That would be enough to begin producing fissile material for a bomb.

"It could be six months, it could be a year," ElBaradei said in an interview in the newspaper's Tuesday edition.

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