President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iran has admitted developing a secret uranium enrichment plant. Photograph: Str/AP
Iran has admitted the existence of a secret uranium plant revealed by US officials this morning, bringing the long crisis over the country's nuclear programme to a head.
Iran sent a letter to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on Monday, saying it had established a second pilot uranium enrichment plant, parallel to the one monitored by the IAEA in Natanz.
According to western officials, the letter was only sent after the Iranian government discovered the secret plant had been discovered by western intelligence.
Barack Obama, flanked by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is expected to deliver an ultimatum to Iran on the fringes of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh later today.
The late admission to the IAEA is unlikely to spare Iran from immediate demands from the international community to show IAEA inspectors the secret plant, and to halt all uranium enrichment.
The revelation of the second plant's existence now make harsh new UN sanctions much more likely if Iran refuses to stop enriching.
According to the New York Times the secret site is built inside a mountain near the ancient city of Qom, one of the holiest Shia cities in the Middle East.
The IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, which has been investigating the Iranian programmes for six years, received a letter on Monday from Tehran, confessing to the establishment of another secret, underground complex south of Tehran for the enrichment of uranium that can be used for power generation and also, when highly enriched, for warheads.
The Associated Press reported that diplomats accredited to the IAEA had been shown the letter, in which the Iranians admitted developing the undeclared plant at an undisclosed location south of Tehran.
According to Reuters, an Iranian news agency, quoting an "informed source", confirmed reports of a second uranium enrichment plant, saying it was similar to Iran's first such plant near Natanz.
"Reports by some foreign news agencies that Iran has launched its second enrichment centre are correct and Iran has informed the [UN nuclear watchdog] about this," the ISNA news agency quoted its source as saying. "The second enrichment centre is similar to the enrichment installations at Natanz," the source said.
Analysts speculated that the Iranians had delivered a partial confession because they knew that US intelligence was monitoring the activities and they were about to be exposed.
The three leaders in Pittsburgh are to demand that the Iranians make the new site accessible to the UN inspectors, the New York Times reported.
According to the NYT, US officials have been tracking the covert project for years. Obama decided to go public after Iran discovered that western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project.
According to the newspaper the facility is not complete. American officials said they believe it was designed to hold about 3,000 centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium for nucleur power plants and potentially for bombs.
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