President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday his country has set up more than 3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges and new sets are being installed every week, reaching in this way a key target of Iran's nuclear program.

Speaking in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said more centrifuges will become operational at the Natanz nuclear power plant regardless of the sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

He said UN Security Council resolutions couldn’t setback the national drive and Iran reached new levels in the nuclear development over the past years. The international community accused Tehran of using the civilian program to build nuclear weapons at its facilities, but Iranian officials denied the allegations.

Ahmadinejad’s statement sparks new controversy, because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has a completely different knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program. The latest report filled by the Vienna-base agency said about 2,000 centrifuges are working at the facility in central Iran and around 650 were not functional.

An official from the Iranian National Security Council said in May that 3,000 will be installed at Natanz and 1,600 were already functional. Last week, the IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said the process of enriching uranium in Iran has been slowed down compared to previous years.

The Iranian leader said this process will continue until a satisfactory level is reached and the energetic sector can rely on this resources. Highly enriched uranium and plutonium represent powerful energy sources, but can also be used for the construction of nuclear weapons.