TEHRAN: Iran said today it was considering plans to start building two new uranium enrichment plants from next month, with the sites concealed in the mountains to avert air strikes.

The announcement from Iran’s atomic chief

Ali Akbar Salehi came soon after top US General David Petraeus warned that Washington would now pursue “pressure track” against Iran to thwart its gallopping nuclear programme.

“Inshallah (God willing), in the next Iranian year (starting in March) as ordered by the president we may start the construction of two new enrichment sites,” Salehi told ISNA news agency.

In November, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Iran would build 10 new uranium enrichment plants, after Tehran was strongly rebuked by world powers for building a second enrichment plant near the Shiite holy city of Qom.

Salehi said the enrichment capacities of the new sites would be similar to the existing facility in the central city of Natanz, where a defiant Tehran is refining uranium despite three sets of UN sanctions.

According to the latest UN nuclear watchdog report, Iran has installed in Natanz 8,610 centrifuges, the device which rotates at supersonic speed to enrich uranium.

Of these, 3,772 centrifuges are actively enriching uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Salehi said the new plants will be equipped with new

generation centrifuges and the facilities would

be hidden in mountains so as to protect them from “any attacks.”

On the diplomatic front, European nations at a meeting in Brussels on Monday appeared divided over boosting sanctions against Iran.

“Unhappily all the actions by the Iranian side for weeks confirm that we must move to (more) sanctions,” French European Affairs Minister Pierre Lellouche said.

But several of his EU counterparts said diplomacy had not run its course and insisted on the need for a UN Security Council decision.

On Sunday, Petraeus said the United States, which along with its

ally Israel has not ruled

out military strikes

against Iran’s nuclear

sites, would increase pressure on Tehran.

“I think that no one at the end of this time can say that the United States and the rest of the world have not given Iran every opportunity to resolve the issues diplomatically,” said Petraeus, head of US Central Command.

“That puts us in a solid foundation now to go on what is termed the pressure track. That’s the course on which we are embarked now,” the general told NBC television.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday insisted “now” was the time for new sanctions on Iran’s oil exports.

“It is uncertain that these measures will suffice, but at least we will have tried. If the UN Security Council does not agree, they could be imposed separately, outside the UN. What is certain

is that these sanctions must be applied, and now,” he added.

World powers suspect Iran is enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.