Russian specialists are completing the construction of Iran's first NPP under a $1 billion contract signed in 1995, but Russia claimed last month that Iran had an unpaid debt for its construction services, and said that as a result construction might take longer than previously expected.
"As of today, the existing problems with the Bushehr NPP construction are financial and technical. But if Russia fails to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran in March, it will mean the problem is more than just technical," Mohammad Saidi, a deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Iranian news agency IRNA in Moscow.
He said he hopes the remaining problems will be resolved next week during a Russian delegation visit to Tehran next week.
Sergei Shmatko, head of the Russian company Atomstroyexport, said the Moscow negotiations between Russian and Iranian nuclear officials on the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran yielded no results.
He also accused Iran of politicizing the Bushehr NPP construction, which "does not meet our goals and creates obstacles to its implementation."
A source from Atomstroyexport said earlier, "The financing of the project in 2007 had come to a virtual halt as has equipment supplies from third countries."
But Saidi described the Moscow talks as constructive and positive.
"The Russian company [Atomstroyexport] has experienced numerous problems with cash and lacks sufficient financing to complete the NPP building. Therefore, Iran is ready to pay part of the funds, which under contract are due in the final years of construction," Saidi said.
He said Iran is ready to pay more than is required under the financial agreement so that Russia had no pretext to postpone the NPP construction and nuclear fuel supplies.
On Wednesday Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that Iranian payments had been made ahead of schedule adding that construction was almost complete and that suspending or freezing the project was out of the question.
The Bushehr facility has been a source of international dispute, with the United States and other Western countries raising concerns that Iran could use the project as part of a covert weapons program. Iran has consistently denied that its nuclear program has military goals.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution in December imposing sanctions against Iran.
Russia, a key economic partner of Iran, has consistently supported the Islamic Republic's right to nuclear power under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and has resisted the imposition of harsh sanctions.
