New York, Sep 26 (DPA) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared the dispute over his country’s nuclear programme “closed” even as Western nations threatened additional sanctions if Iran fails to stop its enrichment programme.
Ahmadejad said in a speech before the UN General Assembly Tuesday that the matter was now in the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog. The IAEA has been holding talks in the last two days with Iranian negotiators to map out a plan to get assurances and proof that Iran’s nuclear intentions are peaceful.
“I officially announce that in our opinion the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter,” Ahmadinejad said.
Western countries have accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, and several leaders voiced those fears again in their own speeches Tuesday to the assembly.
“If we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we would incur an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy had said earlier.
The Security Council has ordered Iran to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities – a process that can be used to build weapons – and twice imposed limited sanctions.
The US House of Representatives, meanwhile, voted Tuesday to impose more sanctions on Iran and urged the US government to designate the Iranian military as a terrorist organisation.
Ahmadinejad called the French and US threats of further action “not important” in a press conference after his speech to the assembly. For Iran, the “political issue” of its nuclear programme was now closed, but Ahmadinejad said that “all our efforts will most certainly be geared toward preventing sanctions”.
He also sought to clarify his remarks calling for the “destruction” of Israel by likening its disappearance from the world to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“The Soviet Union: where is it now as an entity? It disappeared,” Ahmadinejad said in response to a question about his past remarks on Israel. “Was it done through war? No, it was done through the choice of the people. So allow the Palestinian people to decide for themselves.”
In his assembly speech, Ahmadinejad repeated claims that his country had succeeded in producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale “for peaceful purposes”.
He said the Security Council was being held hostage by a group of “arrogant powers”. He did not name any country.
“Among all the ineffective bodies, unfortunately, the UN Security Council ranks first,” he said. “Abusing the Security Council, the arrogant powers have repeatedly accused Iran and even made military threats and imposed illegal sanctions against it.”
Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York had come under a swirl of controversy and local opposition after he was denied permission last week to lay a wreath at the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood.
On Monday, the Iranian leader spoke before a hostile New York audience at Columbia University, where he was introduced by the university’s president as a “cruel and petty dictator”.