Iran: Iran vowed yesterday to press ahead with nuclear activities that could be used to develop weapons and accused the US and Israel of threatening international peace with their own atomic arsenals.
"Iran is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology including [uranium] enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes," Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi told a UN-sponsored conference on nuclear disarmament.
"It is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of non-proliferation," he said.
Iran also criticised the United States, which accuses Tehran of using its nuclear programme as a front for developing nuclear weapons, for not scrapping its own atomic arsenal as required under the 1970 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
"Unilateral nuclear disarmament measures should be pursued vigorously," Mr Kharrazi said.
It was also "abhorrent that ... the dangerous doctrine of the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states and threats [ were] officially proclaimed by the United States and NATO."
Mr Kharrazi also had a few words about Iran's other enemy, Israel, whose nuclear arsenal, he claimed, "has endangered regional and global peace and security".
"Israel has continuously rejected the calls by the international community ... to accede to the [ treaty]," he said.
Israel, which neither admits nor denies having the bomb, is estimated to have around 200 warheads.
Rising tensions about Iran (as well as North Korea, which has said it has nuclear arms) dominated the opening of a month-long review conference of the treaty, the cornerstone of atomic disarmament pacts.
The United States on Monday pressed the conference of 188 nations to ensure Tehran and Pyongyang are denied peaceful nuclear energy benefits because they had violated the treaty.
"For almost two decades, Iran has conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons programme," US assistant secretary of state Stephen Rademaker said.
"We dare not look the other way." - (Reuters)