By Michelle Moghtader and Fredrik Dahl
DUBAI/VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country would need to significantly increase its number of centrifuges, underlining a gap in positions between Tehran and world powers as they hold talks aimed at clinching a nuclear accord.
Iran and six major powers have less than two weeks to reach an agreement on the future scope of Iran's uranium enrichment programme and other issues if they are to meet a self-imposed July 20 deadline for a deal.
They resumed talks in Vienna last week and their negotiators continued meetings in the Austrian capital on Tuesday, but there was no immediate sign of any substantive progress.
Iran's enrichment capacity lies at the centre of the nuclear stalemate and is seen as the hardest issue to resolve. Iran insists it needs to expand its capacity to refine uranium to fuel a planned network of atomic energy plants. The powers say Tehran must sharply reduce the capacity to prevent it being able to quickly produce a nuclear bomb.
"Their aim is that we accept a capacity of 10,000 separative work units (SWUs), which is equivalent to 10,000 centrifuges of the older type that we already have. Our officials say we need 190,000 centrifuges. Perhaps this is not a need this year or in two years or five years, but this is the country's absolute need," Khamenei said in a statement published on his website late on Monday.
Tehran says its programme is solely for civilian purposes such as electricity generation and denies any plan to build an atomic bomb.
Ending the decade-long dispute with Iran is seen as central to defusing tensions and averting a new Middle East war.
A Western diplomat made clear the uphill task negotiations face if they are to hammer out an agreement, telling Reuters on Tuesday: "We're still far from a deal." However, "the deadline is July 20 and that's what we're working towards."
HARDLINERS
Last week, other Western diplomats said Iran had reduced demands for the size of its future nuclear enrichment programme in the negotiations, although Western governments were urging Tehran to compromise further. They did not give details.
Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank, said Khamenei's statement "confirms what I have suspected: that although Iranian negotiators have leeway on some issues, such as transparency and the timeframe for lifting sanctions, they are not authorised to accept cutbacks to the enrichment programme".
"The statement is not definitive, in that it speaks about future needs, not the limits that might be acceptable today. But it will make it difficult for the government to explain to the hardliners why limits will have to be accepted," he said.
Iran now has more than 19,000 installed enrichment centrifuges, mostly old-generation IR-1 machines, with about 10,000 of them operating to increase the concentration of uranium's fissile isotope U-235.
In 2006, when the U.N. Security Council imposed its first sanctions resolution against the country, Iran had a few hundred centrifuges that it was testing. Iran has since expanded the number sharply until it stopped doing that under the November 24 interim nuclear deal agreed between Iran and the world powers in exchange for limited sanctions relief.
Iran wants an end to sanctions, which have stifled its economy and hindered oil exports. But Khamenei, ultimate arbiter on all major decisions in Iran, said the country "should plan for the future, supposing the enemy won't ease on sanctions".
Khamenei said the idea of shutting down the underground Fordow nuclear enrichment plant because it was inaccessible was "laughable", according to his website.
Western powers note some elements of the programme have been concealed in contravention of international accords, including Fordow, built inside a mountain and whose existence was only disclosed in 2009 after Western intelligence detected it.
(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Gareth Jones)
