Iran on Wednesday launched a test run of its first nuclear power plant which is being built by a Russian contractor near the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, and Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's Rosatom state nuclear energy corporation, were present at the site to start the trial run of the power plant.

The 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant, which had been scheduled for operation in 2007, is expected to be completed by the end of this year after repeated delays.

The Bushehr plant, Iran's first nuclear power plant, originally started in the mid-1970s by Siemens of Germany but was abandoned with the outbreak of the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran and Russia, after reaching an agreement on nuclear cooperation in 1992, signed a contract in January 1995 to finish the construction of the plant, the completion of which has been repeatedly delayed.

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2009)