Russia on Wednesday reiterated opposition to solving the disputed Iranian nuclear issue by force, after Tehran on Tuesday declared that it had successfully enriched uranium.

"A solution to the Iranian problem from the position of strength does not exist. All European Union countries agree with this," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news briefing here on Wednesday.

Lavrov said all participants in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear issue "have noted more than once the need for a political and diplomatic solution of that problem."

"Iran has never declared the intention to have nuclear arms," Lavrov said, adding that the Iranian leadership invariably stated Tehran wanted to have a purely civilian nuclear power industry.

Commenting on reports of U.S. plans for a possible military attack on Iran, Lavrov added: "If such plans exist, and we have, of course, read about them in the media, they will not be able to resolve the problem."

"They will only create another hotbed of tension in the Middle East, a region which already has enough such hotbeds," he said.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that scientists had reached a milestone by successfully enriching uranium to make nuclear fuel.

The timing of the Iranian announcement, on the eve of the visit of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei to Tehran, has heightened international tensions surrounding Iran's nuclear program.

Viktor Mikhailov, ex-minister of the Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy who leads the ministry's Institute for Strategic Stability, said, "Any enrichment of uranium up to 20 percent is not forbidden by IAEA rules and is used for obtaining fuel for nuclear power stations, not for military purposes."

"This is an experimental enrichment of several grams of uranium, and it would be early to speak about the creation of a full nuclear cycle in that country," Mikhailov stressed.

The UN Security Council on March 29 adopted a presidential statement that urged Iran to fully restore the suspension of all activities related to uranium enrichment in 30 days.

The Iranian nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said on Tuesday that the success in producing low-grade enriched uranium would pave the way for Iran to start industrial-scale production, adding that efforts were underway to expand the operations of the centrifuges.

Source: Xinhua