Iran claims presence of US aircraft carrier cruising in Gulf Waters
By Laiylla Sherazi 'Pakistan Times' Foreign Correspondent

TEHRAN (Iran): Iran's Arabic language television station broadcast footage showed a US aircraft carrier cruising in Gulf waters, the report said the footage was shown from a film taken by an unmanned Iranian drone.

The brief minute-long film, which was shown on the TV in evening news bulletin, showed wobbly aerial footage of an aircraft carrier stacked with warplanes as it sailed.

The television's anchor said the film, the property of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, showed a vessel from "the US fleet in the Gulf".

"A source in the Revolutionary Guard said the drone carried out its mission without US fighter pilots reaching it," the television said.

It said there were 10 such films taken by the drone, which showed "more precise information and details about military equipment, foreign forces, and their activities in the Gulf."

The station did not name the vessel nor did it say when the footage was shot.

The broadcast comes near the end of Iran's latest 10-day war games, "Great Prophet II", which military chiefs have said were aimed at showing off Iran's defensive prowess and testing new military hardware.

The war games coincided with US-led naval manoeuvres in the Gulf off Iran aimed at halting arms-trafficking, the first time such an exercise has been held in the area.

Nuclear Centrifuges

Meanwhile, The Iranian foreign ministry said Sunday that Iran plans to install 3,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment by March 2007.

"Iranian officials and experts are seeking to do this," the ministry's spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters, responding to a question as to whether Tehran remains determined to install 3,000 centrifuges by the end of Iranian year in March 2007.

Iran has so far built two cascades of 164 centrifuges for uranium enrichment -- the process used to make nuclear fuel and, in much higher grades, the core of an atom bomb.●