Iran said Friday it will press ahead with its controversial uranium-enrichment program so it can provide fuel for the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant due to go online this weekend.

"Enrichment [of uranium] for producing fuel for the Bushehr plant and other plants will continue," the country's atomic chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, told state news agency IRNA.

Iran 's first nuclear power plant, in the southern port city of Bushehr , is due to be launched Saturday. Russia has built the plant and also supplied it with fuel.

But Salehi said Iran would pursue uranium enrichment as Tehran may not always be in a position to buy fuel for the plant from Moscow .

"The Bushehr plant has a lifespan of 60 years and we plan to use it for 40 years. Suppose we buy fuel for 10 years from Russia . What are we going to do for the next 30 to 50 years?" Salehi said.

He said the contract with Russia doesn't stipulate that Tehran has always to buy fuel from Moscow , as the "memorandum of understanding says they will meet our demand if we request" it.

The Bushehr plant is scheduled to go online after more than three decades of delay.

In a separate report, IRNA cited Ali Asghar Soltanieh Iran 's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations atomic watchdog, as saying that the Bushehr launch symbolises Tehran 's "dominance over the nuclear fuel cycle."

The Bushehr plant isn't directly under U.N. sanctions, although Tehran has been slapped by four sets of punitive measures for pursuing the sensitive uranium-enrichment program.

The latest round of U.N. sanctions were imposed June 9.

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