The nuclear power chiefs of Russia and Iran continued talks Tuesday on bilateral cooperation, including on the controversial Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, which Russia is helping to build 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
"[Sergei] Kiriyenko will visit Iran in December, where he will discuss bilateral relations with Iranian leadership," Mohammad Saeedi said. "We hope that during his trip we will at last be able to reach an agreement about the early commissioning of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr."
Kiriyenko, who is the head of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power and co-chairman of a Russian-Iranian intergovernmental commission, said in February that the commission would meet in the second half of 2006.
"Russia is interested in advancing trade and economic cooperation with Iran," he said at the time. "We are interested in fulfilling the tasks that our commission is faced with."
Last Monday, Kiriyenko told journalists on the sidelines of the 50th International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference in Vienna that the Bushehr NPP in southern Iran would be launched in November 2007.
"The Bushehr nuclear power plant will be commissioned in September 2007, and the power generating launch will take place in November 2007," Kiriyenko said.
The NPP is being constructed under the supervision of the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog.
Russia's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, Atomstroiexport, is building Bushehr's first power unit under a $1 billion contract signed by Russia and Iran in 1995. A supplemental agreement signed in 1998 stipulates that Atomstroiexport will complete construction of the plant on the basis of a turnkey arrangement.
