IRAN - May 29 - Iran Says It Has Conducted Research on N-fusion- Tehran:.

Tehran says it had conducted research into nuclear fusion, a process that carries the promise of clean, inexhaustible supplies of energy but one that triggers the destructive power of the hydrogen bomb. "The first research of nuclear fusion in Iran was done five years ago", said Sadat Hosseini, who runs the technical department at the Nuclear Research Centre of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation. He gave no details on Iran's fusion research programme and it was not clear why Iran had decided to announce the research now. But it appeared to be part of the country's policy of defying world calls for it to cease uranium enrichment as a guarantee that it was not trying to build a nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear programme is designed only for energy production. "Iranian nuclear scientists are competing with the advanced world in the field of producing nuclear energy through fusion", Hosseini said, according to state television. Nuclear fusion uses enormous amounts of energy to fuse atomic nuclei to form a heavier, single nucleus. So far most versions of the process have consumed far more energy than they have produced.