(news.com) - IRAN today said it had fed gas into a second cascade of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility despite threats of UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, the ISNA news agency reported.
"The second cascade was set up two weeks ago and this week gas was injected in them," an unidentified official source told the agency.
"We have the product of the second cascade," the source added.
Iran on Wednesday confirmed it has installed new equipment to step up uranium enrichment work and said it would imminently start pumping gas into the equipment to make enriched uranium, reports Trend.
The announcement comes as six major powers are huddling behind closed doors in New York to review a draft UN Security Council resolution mandating sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt its sensitive nuclear fuel work, which the West fears could be diverted to make a nuclear bomb.
The charge has been vehemently denied by Iran which maintains its nuclear programme is aimed solely at producing electricity.
The talks at Britain's UN mission in New York brought together ambassadors from the UN Security Council's five veto-wielding members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US - as well as from Germany.
The focus was on a resolution crafted by Britain, France and Germany in consultations with Washington to penalise Tehran for failing to heed UN demands that it freeze its uranium enrichment activities.
Iran has until now been conducting a small-scale research enrichment programme at its plant in Natanz, in the centre of the country, where it has so far been feeding the UF6 gas into a single 164-centrifuge cascade.
Enrichment is carried out in lines of centrifuges called cascades and is used to make the fuel for civilian nuclear reactors. But in highly refined form the product can serve as the raw material for atomic weapons.