A defiant Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran did not need to gain the trust of the West as it is observing global rules, unlike those who have nuclear arsenals, the official IRNA news agency reported yesterday.
Ahmadinejad, on arriving in New York to participate in a review meeting of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Western powers were not seeking to build trust with the Islamic republic, IRNA reported.
“We should not offer ways to obtain their trust as Iran abides by the international law and acts within its framework,” Ahmadinejad said as he landed at New York’s JFK airport.
PHOTO: AFP
“Iran is committed to international regulations,” he said, adding that Western powers “who have stockpiled nuclear weapons, have used them and are monopolizing them, are not seeking to build trust” with Iran.
Ahmadinejad, who has enraged the West with his country’s dogged pursuance of a nuclear program, also said Iran would make “practical, fair and clear proposals” aimed at world security at the NPT conference.
“These proposals will be outlined on Monday in the conference,” he said, adding that “disarmament and peaceful use of nuclear energy” were the two main world issues.
“We consider disarmament to be an influential issue in world security and we are pursuing it,” he said.
Ahmadinejad on Sunday said the NPT has failed in the last 40 years when it came to issues such as disarmament and non-proliferation as some countries procured the nuclear bomb during this period.
Iran is a signatory of the NPT, a creation of the UN nuclear watchdog, and as such has the right to enrich uranium — the most controversial part of its nuclear program.
Washington, its ally Israel — widely believed to be the Middle East’s sole but undeclared nuclear weapons power — and other world powers accuse Iran of masking a weapons drive under the guise of what Tehran says is a purely civilian atomic program.
Ahmadinejad’s trip had triggered controversy even before he left for New York, with Iranian officials saying the US had rejected visas for several members of his delegation.
In a sign the US-Iranian standoff is about to spill over at the NPT conference running from yesterday to May 28, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Iran would try to divert attention from its violations against laws controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.
Clinton told the NBC television network on Sunday that she thought the Iranians were going “to try ... confuse the issue,” that their country is under UN sanctions to rein in its nuclear program to allay fears it seeks the bomb.
“They have violated the terms of the NPT” by hiding sensitive nuclear work and continuing to enrich uranium, a potential weapons material, Clinton said.
“We’re not going to permit Iran to try to change the story from their failure to comply” or upset efforts “to get the international community to adopt a strong Security Council resolution that further isolates them and imposes consequences for their behavior,” she said.
Both Ahmadinejad and Clinton were to address the NPT conference’s opening session yesterday.
The review conference, which is held every five years, comes 40 years after the landmark NPT came into force and it aims to discuss how to further the treaty’s full implementation and universality.
The focus in more than three weeks of discussions will be on the treaty’s three main pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful use of nuclear energy.
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