By RIA Novosti
Tehran : Iran Friday said it would welcome foreign investment in its nuclear industry, but would not abandon its uranium enrichment programme.
“We are ready for cooperation and joint investment (in the nuclear sphere), but that has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said and added that Iran’s right to pursue nuclear energy programmes was non-negotiable.
“We do not intend to discuss our rights in the nuclear energy sphere,” he said.
The chief of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said Thursday that the international community should give Iran more time to prove that its nuclear programme was peaceful.
“This situation, which might continue for two or three months, is an investment in peace,” ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in an interview with the Egyptian daily al-Ahram.
On Wednesday, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he planned to meet the head of Iran’s Security Council, Ali Larijani, in the near future.
Speaking to EU lawmakers at the European Parliament, Solana said it was necessary to send Iran a positive signal. He reiterated his hope that the dispute over Iran’s nuclear issue could be resolved by diplomatic means.
In mid-September the six countries involved in talks to persuade Iran to drop uranium enrichment delayed a vote on a new set of sanctions against the Islamic republic until November. The vote was postponed pending reports from the IAEA and Solana.
The six nations involved in talks are the five permanent Security Council members: China, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and France plus Germany.
The US and France have urged tougher penalties for Iran, which is suspected of pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme. Tehran insists it needs its own nuclear fuel for power generation and wants to be independent of foreign supplies.