Ahmadinejad: Iran can pass sanctions against West – report
Washington, 5 September (IranVNC)—In an interview with Japan’s Public Broadcasting Corporation, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai [NHK], Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said that his country was capable of imposing sanctions on Western powers in response to Western pressure on Iran over the country’s nuclear program.
By: IranVNC
Published: Friday, September 05, 2008
20:00GMT—4:00PM/EST
AHMADINEJAD – NUCLEAR – IRAN – WEST
Washington, 5 September (IranVNC)—In an interview with Japan’s Public Broadcasting Corporation, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai [NHK], Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said that his country was capable of imposing sanctions on Western powers in response to Western pressure on Iran over the country’s nuclear program.
“We have not yet reacted strongly to sanctions that rude and bullying powers have imposed, but if they should overstep their bounds, the Iranian nation will react and the Islamic Republic, too, can put sanctions on them,” Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Iran’s nuclear program is a “simple and ordinary matter” Ahmadinejad said. “Like other nations, Iran is interested in using nuclear energy and international law formally recognizes this right,” he added.
The United Nations Security Council has imposed three sets of economic sanctions against Iran for its refusal to heed international demands to stop its controversial uranium enrichment work.
The world’s six major powers - the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany - offered Iran a package of incentives in July to persuade Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.
Following the proposal, Russia suggested that Iran should suspend its uranium activities as a confidence building measure to reassure the international community that it is not using the cover of a civilian nuclear power program to develop nuclear weapons.
But Ahmadinejad said today that the major powers had made “two major mistakes” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.
“Firstly, they create a tense international atmosphere by denying nations their lawful rights and everyone loses in such an atmosphere. Secondly, they equate nuclear energy with a nuclear bomb.”
Iran, the second largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC], says it has the right to enrich uranium as part of a civilian nuclear power program aimed at meeting the energy demands of its growing population.
Ahmadinejad today said: “Instead of neutralizing their own nuclear warheads, the world’s bullying major powers keep others from using peaceful nuclear energy.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] has held several rounds of talks with Iran in the last year to clarify intelligence reports that suggested Iran had carried out nuclear weaponization studies. Iran has in the past rejected these accusations as “baseless”.
In an interview with Jordan’s al-Haqiqah al-Duwwaliyah daily earlier this week, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said: “As far as the nuclear weapons are concerned, I cannot confirm nor deny Iran’s intentions.” In order to enrich weapons-grade uranium, however, Iran would have to leave the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], he added.
In June, Iran’s Majlis [parliament] threatened to withdraw from the NPT’s Additional Protocol – an article Tehran signed in 2003 – which allows for snap inspections of its nuclear facilities by IAEA experts.
If Tehran does pull out of the NPT and expel the IAEA’s inspectors, ElBaradei warned that Iran would need “a period of time not less than one year” to acquire the quantity of uranium needed to make the highly-enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb.
Sources: ISNA in Persian, Al-Haqiqah al-Duwwaliyah in Arabic
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