|
Iran will push nuclear programme
'to the limit'
AFP
Friday May 25, 2007
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that Iran will continue
developing its nuclear programme to the limit as threats loom of
yet more UN sanctions against the country.
"Iran's nuclear technology is being developed each day and
will reach the farthest possible limit," the president said
in a speech in Isfahan province reported by state news agency IRNA.
"The great powers are using every means to prevent Iran's
progress, but the Iranian people, with strength and resistance,
will brush aside the obstacles placed along the way by those powers
and will continue their path to the summit of progress."
He was speaking as the United States was urging its European allies,
Russia, and China to toughen sanctions on Iran for its defiance
of UN demands to rein in its suspect nuclear programme.
"We need to strengthen our sanction regime," President
George W. Bush said on Thursday a day after UN nuclear watchdog
the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tehran had accelerated
its uranium enrichment efforts, which can be a key step in atomic
bomb-making.
Ahmadinejad said in response that the "great powers should
renounce their crude methods against Iran, such as adopting sanctions,
and should apologise to the people of Iran."
He repeated his oft-stated insistence that Tehran will not budge
one iota from its efforts to develop nuclear power, something it
claims the right to do under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
which it signed.
Iran insists that its programme is aimed solely at developing nuclear
energy for its growing population, but Washington and its allies
are convinced Tehran is using the programme as a cover to develop
nuclear weapons.
In a jab at the United States for boosting its naval presence in
the Gulf, Ahmadinejad said "if your missiles, aircraft carriers
and bombers could do anything they would have helped you get out
of the quagmire of Iraq."
The carriers USS John Stennis and USS Nimitz sailed through the
Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf this week along with a helicopter
carrier and amphibious assault ships carrying an estimated 2,200
marines.
The US Navy said the Gulf exercises were not directed at Iran,
but Mustafa Alani, senior analyst with the UAE-based Gulf Research
Centre, said it was no coincidence that the powerful flotilla arrived
on the day of the UN report.
"The aim of this step, which coincides entirely with the end
of the UN deadline (to suspend uranium enrichment), is to send a
clear message to Iran that a military option is available to Washington,"
Alani said.
Ahmadinejad also accused the United States and its allies of having
gone into Iraq four years ago as part of a strategy to encircle
Iran, and said "they now need the help of the Iranian people
to be rescued."
His comments also come as US and Iranian diplomats prepared for
historic talks on Iraqi security in Baghdad on Monday.
Both sides have said their discussions will focus strictly on Iraq,
and will not touch on other issues such as Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran believes that the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq
is a prerequisite if security is to be restored to its war-ravaged
neighbour.
The United States charges Iran with fomenting the violence through
its support for extremist groups, mainly Shiite.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
