Obama Issues Ultimatum to Iran After Second Uranium Enrichment Plant Revealed

US President Barack Obama said on Saturday the discovery of a secret nuclear plant in Iran showed a "disturbing pattern" of evasion by Tehran, issuing an ultimatum to it on nukes.

"My offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue remains open," Obama said. "But Iran must now cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency and take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions."

Iran acknowledged the existence of the uranium enrichment facility near Qom for the first time on Monday in a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency. U.S. officials said the disclosure was aimed at preempting an announcement by Western governments, which were aware of the site.

"This is a serious challenge to the global nonproliferation regime and continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

"That is why international negotiations with Iran scheduled for October 1 now take on added urgency," he said of the talks between Iran, the United States and five other powers due to occur next week in Geneva.

Israel considered Iran's disclosure of its second nuclear enrichment facility a proof of the country's seek to acquire nuclear weapons and demanded an "unequivocal" Western response.

"The revelations of this second nuclear enrichment site in Iran prove beyond any doubt that this country wants to equip itself with nuclear weapons," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told public radio.

Feeling the growing international pressure on its government and the strengthened resolve to
deny it nuclear military status, Iran must have thought of the disclosure as a preemptive step to hit two birds with one stone. On one hand it gives Tehran more leverage in the Oct meetings and on the other it render the effects of any attack on its facilities indecisively minor.

The head of Tehran's nuclear programme, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the second plant had been built to ensure Iran could continue to refine uranium even in the event of foreign air raids on its other sites.