President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that Iran will penalize world powers by freezing nuclear talks for two months as he laid down several conditions for resuming the negotiations.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that
Iran
will
penalize world powers by freezing nuclear talks for two months as he laid down
several conditions for resuming the negotiations.
The hardliner said
Iran
wanted more countries to be involved in talks over its nuclear program, and
added that world powers must clarify
Israel
's
status of nuclear arsenal and what exactly they sought from the discussions.
"The negotiations [would likely occur] at the end of [the Iranian month
of] Mordad," around the end of August, Ahmadinejad said at a
Tehran
news
conference when asked when
Iran
would
talk to the world powers over its nuclear program.
"We are postponing the talks because of the bad behavior and the adoption
of the new resolution in the [United Nations] Security Council. This is a
penalty, so that they [the world powers] are disciplined to learn the way of
talking to other nations."
The U.N. Security Council imposed a fourth set of sanctions on
Iran
on
June 9 for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment work, the most sensitive
part of its atomic drive.
World powers led by the
U.S.
suspect that
Iran
is
masking a weapons drive under what
Iran
says
is a civilian atomic program.
But immediately after the U.N. sanctions the world powers--the
U.K.
,
France
,
Russia
,
China
, the
U.S.
and
Germany
--that
had been negotiating with
Iran
called for more dialogue to resolve the crisis.
Ahmadinejad said
Iran
would
talk with them but "other independent nations... will also take
part." He didn't specify the names of the countries
Iran
would
like to be involved in the talks.
He said the world powers must clarify what they are seeking from the talks and
their "negotiators must clearly express their position on nuclear weapons
possessed by the Zionist regime"
Israel
.
Iran
's
arch-foe
Israel
,
believed to be the sole if undeclared nuclear weapons power in the
Middle
East
, has never ruled out a military strike against
Iran
's
atomic plants to stop its nuclear program.
Iran
has
on several occasions demanded that
Israel
become member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and put its nuclear
arsenal under the purview of the U.N. atomic watchdog.
Speaking separately on the nuclear fuel swap deal, Ahmadinejad said Iran was
ready to talk, "but the talks will be held on the basis of the Tehran
Declaration and I don't think there is any need to add anything to it."
"Naturally if France, Russia and the U.S. are coming from the other side,
from this side it will be Iran, Turkey and Brazil who will participate in the
talks," Ahmadinejad said.
The fuel "exchange is a way for engagement and this is better than
confrontation."
On May 17,
Iran
,
Turkey
and
Brazil
signed what is now called as Tehran Declaration, a proposal which envisages
shipping
Iran
's
low-enriched uranium (LEU) to
Turkey
to be
followed at a later date with the supply of high enriched uranium to
Tehran
from
Russia
and
France
.
The West has cold-shouldered this proposal citing several concerns.
Ahmadinejad also took the opportunity to reject the remarks of the chief of the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, that
Iran
could
have nuclear weapons ready to use by as early as 2012.
"We have clearly declared that the nuclear bomb belongs to politically
retarded governments who lack logic," Ahmadinejad said.
"What good is an atom bomb to anyone? The stupidest thing today is
accumulating atomic weapons. They seek accomplices in the crime and
Iran
will
not be an accomplice in their crime. We are standing firm on disarmament."
Speaking on
U.S.
television, Panetta said Sunday that
Iran
has
manufactured enough LEU for two atomic weapons.
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