Iran's Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr was not affected by the country's powerful earthquake on Tuesday and continues its operations as normal, a spokesman for the Russian state nuclear corporation said. The Bushehr nuclear power plant on the Gulf is located some 950 kilomtres (590 miles) west of Khash, a town near the epicentre of what Iran said was a 7.5 magnitude quake. "A representative at the site said they did not even feel the tremors," Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov told AFP. "The epicentre was far away from Bushehr."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday defended his country's controversial nuclear programme while on a tour of west Africa, calling it peaceful and arguing that Tehran has no use for an atomic bomb. Speaking during a visit to Benin, the first stop on a three-nation tour, Ahmadinejad called nuclear energy a "divine gift" providing affordable electricity. "They accuse Iran, like all nations that seek to rapidly find their way out of the current domination," the Iranian leader said through an interpreter in a speech at a Benin university.

DUBAI/KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - National emergency officials in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries met on Sunday in Saudi Arabia to discuss the risk of radiation spreading over the Gulf if Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant is damaged by another earthquake. A 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck close to Iran's only nuclear power station last week, killing dozens of people but leaving the nearby plant undamaged, according to Iranian officials and the Russian company that built it.

Iran's former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani joined the race to succeed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday, accusing the incumbent of needlessly incurring crippling economic sanctions. Rowhani, 64, who headed the relatively moderate nuclear negotiating team that served under reformist president Mohammad Khatami before Ahmadinejad took power in 2005, joins a field of more than a dozen hopefuls for the June election. Ahmadinejad, who fired Rowhani on taking office, is barred by the constitution from standing for a third consecutive four-year term.