Source: Iran acknowledges second nuclear facility

PITTSBURGH — President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain will demand Friday that Iran open to international inspectors a secret nuclear facility it has tried to hide from the world for years, a senior White House official told The Associated Press.

The three leaders – Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy – will open the G-20 economic summit with their demand that Tehran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the facility for producing nuclear fuel, officials said.

Iran has kept the facility, 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from weapons inspectors, but the U.S. has long known of its existence, the official said. Obama decided to go public with the revelation after Iran learned that Western intelligence agencies were aware of the project.

The officials spoke on grounds of anonymity because Obama's announcement was still pending.

Word the three leaders would make the announcement was first reported by The New York Times.

Meanwhile, a diplomat in Vienna and another European government official told The Associated Press on Friday that Tehran has informed the IAEA of a previously undeclared uranium enriching facility.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was confidential, said Iran revealed its existence in a letter sent Monday to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the atomic energy agency.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made no mention of the facility this week while attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, but said that his country had fully cooperated with international nuclear inspectors.