Revolutionary Guards test fire homemade radar-evading missile

Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Friday successfully test fired a homemade missile which can evade radar, state television reported.

"Iran successfully test fired a homemade Fajr-3 missile," Hossein Salami, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander, said on state television.

The missile was tested as part of a week of naval wargames that started on Friday and were due to take place in the Gulf and Sea of Oman.

Previous models of the Fajr range of missiles have been described as a land-based weapons system for use against ships.

"This missile, with the capacity of evading radar, can attack several targets simultaneously," he said, adding the missile was newly developed.

State media described the missile as one of a "new generation." Iran has previously said it had successfully tested missiles carrying the Fajr (Dawn) name.

The range of the new missile was not immediately clear but Salami said it had greater tactical and technical capabilities, state television reported. It also said the missile could not be hit by anti-missile rockets.

Earlier, naval officials had said the wargames would start by firing a Shahab-2 surface-to-surface missile, which experts say has a range of about 700 kilometres.

Naval Admiral Morteza Saffari earlier said the wargames would involve more than 17,000 troops and 500 large and small naval vessels, according to the official IRNA news agency.

The naval wargames were aimed "to display the Islamic system's defensive capabilities," IRNA said.

Diplomats in Europe said this month that Iran, which is currently involved in a nuclear standoff with the West, was stepping up development of missiles capable of carrying atomic warheads.

However, Iran says its nuclear plans are purely for peaceful purposes.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Friday that Teheran would not use oil as a weapon in the row over its nuclear issue.

"We're not going to use energy as a political leverage," Mottaki told reporters in Geneva, where he is on a two-day stay.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council told Iran on Thursday it must heed a UN call to curb its nuclear programme or face isolation.

Britain said Iran could eventually face UN sanctions if it failed to suspend uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for nuclear power stations or atomic bombs.

He reiterated that Iran would not give up its right to develop nuclear power for civilian use and said his country remained open to negotiations on how this could be done.

Source: China Daily