(Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Iran has 3,000 centrifuges running is not backed up by evidence, diplomats familiar with U.N. inspections said.
Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that Iran had 3,000 working centrifuges.
Ahmadinejad's statement also appeared at odds with findings by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors monitoring Iran's underground Natanz plant.
The IAEA's latest quarterly report on Iran, issued last Thursday, said almost 2,000 centrifuges were enriching uranium in tandem as of August 19, with about 650 in various stages of installation and testing.
Inspectors revisited the plant on Monday and found about 325 more centrifuges being hooked up, closing in on the 3,000 threshold, diplomats said on Tuesday.
But the initial 2,000 were operating well below capacity, the report said, suggesting Iran has some way to go before establishing an industrial rate of enrichment.