Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said late on Tuesday that Tehran was reviewing the option of decreasing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after it issued a resolution critical of Iran last week.
Speaking in a live TV interview, Ahmadinejad criticized Russia’s support for agency’s resolution, calling it a mistake: “Friendly relations with the agency are over. We will cooperate as much as they offer us compromises. We are reviewing this.”
The sharply worded IAEA resolution on Friday demanded Iran halt all uranium enrichment and stop construction of a nuclear facility near the Iranian city of Qom. Iran responded by saying it would build even more such facilities.
Tehran insists it has a right to enrich uranium to produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity. The UNs has demanded Iran freeze enrichment, because the process can also be used to develop a warhead. Russia, which has cooperated with Iran in the past to develop its nuclear program, supported the resolution, earning it Ahmadinejad’s censure.
“Russia made a mistake. It has no correct analysis about current situation of the world,” he said, maintaining that Britain and Israel had swayed the opinion of the UN body because of their animosity toward Iran.
The president’s threats follow up those made by parliament speaker Ali Larijani last week to cut ties with the IAEA. Any reduction of UN inspections would immediately raise tensions with the rest of the world even further, yet Ahmadinejad appeared to be suggesting just that saying that under international law, “we can deny [inspectors’] access to domestic technology.”
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
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