Iran 'defiant' at UN General Assembly meeting
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told world leaders his country will defy any further UN Security Council resolutions imposed by “arrogant powers” seeking to curb its nuclear programme.
He said it is “high time for these powers to return from the path of arrogance and obedience to Satan to the path of faith in God”.
Undeterred, France and Germany increased pressure on the Islamic republic at the UN General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting in New York yesterday, saying they would not accept a nuclear-armed Iran.
“Let’s not fool ourselves. If Iran were to acquire the nuclear bomb, the consequences would be disastrous,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the session.
Today’s high-level General Assembly session features speeches by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been due to speak in the afternoon, but he pulled out at the last minute, leaving his foreign minister to take his place.
Ahmadinejad told leaders at the meeting yesterday that the world powers on the Security Council had politicised Tehran’s nuclear programme, making military threats and imposing sanctions against the country as they demanded it suspend uranium enrichment.
He announced to the assembly that the nuclear issue was now “closed” as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear programme “through its appropriate legal path”, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Iranian officials agreed in July that Tehran would answer questions from agency experts by December on more than two decades of nuclear activity – most of it secret until revealed more than four years ago. IAEA technical officials returned to Tehran this week to start probing outstanding questions, some with possible weapons applications.
The US delegation walked out of the General Assembly chamber when Ahmadinejad went to the podium, leaving only a low-ranking note-taker to listen to his speech, which also indirectly accused the US and Israel of human rights violations.
Gonzalo Gallegos, a US State Department spokesman, said the Americans wanted “to send him a powerful message”.
Iran insists that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful and aimed solely at producing nuclear energy.
But the United States and its European allies believe the programme is a cover for Iran’s real ambition – producing nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad has defied two Security Council resolutions demanding it suspend uranium enrichment and imposing sanctions against key figures and organisations involved in the nuclear programme.
He made clear in his speech Iran does not intend to comply with them now.
Iran has decided “to pursue the issue through its appropriate legal path ... and to disregard unlawful and political impositions by the arrogant powers,” he said.
“Some powers sacrifice all human values including honesty, purity and trust for the advancement of their goals,” he said. “They lie openly, level baseless charges against others, act contrary to legal norms and damage the climate of trust and friendship.”
At a news conference later, he said Iran’s efforts will still be geared towards preventing sanctions, but he maintained that the Security Council sanctions against his country were “completely illegal”.
While Iran is allowing the IAEA to inspect its known nuclear facilities, it no longer allows inspectors freedom to probe deeper and look for suspicious activities on short notice anywhere in the country as it once did.
Before Ahmadinejad spoke, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned the assembly that allowing Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons would be an “unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world”.
US President George Bush scarcely mentioned the Iranian nuclear standoff in his speech, instead harshly criticising Burma’s military dictatorship, which he accused of imposing “a 19-year reign of fear” that denies basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship in the country.
Ahmadinejad remained in the General Assembly for Bush’s speech, but a UN diplomat in the chamber said he pulled out his translation earpiece before Bush started to talk.
In an angry defence of Iran, Nicaragua’s leftist President Daniel Ortega chastised the US for seeking to restrict its right to enrich uranium, which is allowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Ortega said the United States, as “the only country in the world to have dropped nuclear bombs on innocent people”, had no right to question the right of Iran and North Korea to pursue nuclear technology for “peaceful purposes”.
Ahmadinejad also indirectly accused the United States and Israel of violating human rights by setting up secret prisons, abducting people, holding trials and enacting secret punishments without any regard to due process, and tapping phone conversations.
“They use various pretexts to occupy sovereign states and cause insecurity and division and then use the prevailing situation as an excuse to continue their occupation. For more than sixty years, Palestine, as compensation for the loss they incurred during the war in Europe, has been under the occupation of the illegal Zionist regime,” he said.
