Iran condemns 'propaganda' against nuclear programme
Iran’s foreign minister today condemned what he called “unjustified propaganda” about his country's nuclear programme, and said he could not envisage reaching an agreement with Western countries that fear Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons.
Manouchehr Mottaki, however, told the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament, that Iran was willing to continue talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Iran’s nuclear programme is peaceful and has never diverted towards prohibited activities,” Mottaki said.
“Three years of negotiations have just added to our mistrust,” he said, referring to talks with key European countries trying to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment programme. There is “no prospect of final agreement”, he said.
Mottaki condemned Western countries for taking Iran to the UN Security Council after the failure of the talks.
The move is “an abuse of international mechanisms, misguided, legally unwarranted and clearly unacceptable”, Mottaki said, adding that it was caused by the “short-sighted political agenda of certain powerful states”.
But he added: "We are willing to continue with negotiations (with the IAEA) and also continue with our sincere and constructive cooperation with the agency,” Mottaki said. “Our cooperation with the agency will continue.”
The Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, the first time the powerful body has directly urged Tehran to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons.
“They try of course to justify their illegal and discriminatory approach under the guise of the non-proliferation concern, the concern that we all share,” Mottaki said. “The biased, exaggerated and unjustified propaganda is being disseminated around the peaceful nuclear programme of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
He said the country’s right to develop peaceful nuclear technology was being undermined – “a peaceful nuclear programme, which is totally legitimate and permissible”.
Mottaki spoke to the conference as foreign ministers of the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany met in Berlin to discuss the Iranian situation.
The Iranian minister praised the body for successes it achieved in the 1990s, including the writing of treaties banning chemical weapons and tests of nuclear weapons, but he said the progress was “doomed because one single state party” abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
“New nuclear weapons were built and new doctrines were devised to lower” the threshold to their use, he said.
Mottaki did not name the United States, but it was clear that much of the criticism was aimed at the administration of US President George Bush, which pulled out of the ABM treaty with Russia so that it could develop defences against an attack from a “rogue” nation.
But he said “certain” other capitals, which he did not name, were also responsible because of their policies.
He particularly criticised the attitude of the nuclear weapons powers who have refused to eliminate their nuclear weapons as they pledged to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
“We’ve seen that certain countries do not feel committed to attaining the objectives of the NPT,” designed primarily to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that don’t already have them, he said.
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