Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sparred over nuclear issues on Monday at the UN, as nations gathered for a month-long debate on the world’s ultimate weapons of destruction.
Speaking from the podium in the General Assembly Hall, Clinton accused Iran of “flouting the rules” of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with its suspect uranium enrichment program, and called for “a strong international response.”
For his part, Ahmadinejad earlier rejected such allegations, saying Washington has not offered “credible proof.”
These were the opening salvos in what will be four weeks of deliberations over how to improve the NPT, formally reviewed every five years by a meeting of all 189 treaty signatories — all the world’s nations except India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
The review is meant to produce a final document detailing ways to better achieve the NPT’s stated goals of checking the spread of nuclear weapons, while working toward reducing and eventually eliminating them.
Because it requires the consensus of all parties, including Iran, any final document is highly unlikely to censure Tehran.
Instead, diplomats from the US and EU will meet elsewhere with Chinese and Russian officials to discuss a fourth round of economic penalties to be imposed by the UN Security Council on Iran.
“I hope that we can reach agreement in the Security Council on tough new sanctions … because I believe that is the only way to catch Iran’s attention,” Clinton said.
In her address, Clinton proposed the nonproliferation treaty be strengthened through the introduction of “automatic penalties” for noncompliance, rather than depending on lengthy council negotiations.
Ahmadinejad devoted much of his half-hour speech to the huge US nuclear arsenal and denounced the Obama administration’s refusal to rule out the use of those weapons.
“Regrettably, the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons, but also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries, including Iran,” he said.
Meanwhile, the US arsenal of more than 5,000 nuclear warheads is both unjustified and a threat to global security, officials in Tehran said yesterday.
“Is possessing 5,000 atomic weapons justified? How can you justify possessing such a number of weapons which threaten world security?” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said at his weekly press conference.
“An independent probe is needed to verify the number of US nuclear warheads. A team of independent countries must be allowed to check whether [the number] is right or not,” he said.
He also dismissed Clinton’s criticism of Ahmadinejad’s anti-US charges at the NPT meeting.
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