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TEHRAN: Iran announced yesterday that it had delivered its first domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility, claiming it was now self-sufficient over the entire nuclear fuel cycle.

The step displays Iran's determination to master nuclear technology without outside help, including by enriching its own uranium, just a day before world powers meet Iranian officials in Geneva in another attempt to persuade them to freeze that work.

Nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the uranium ore concentrate was delivered to the uranium conversion facility in Isfahan for reprocessing.

Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said this showed last week's assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist and the wounding of another in mysterious bombings would not hamper Iran's nuclear progress.