Iran’s Ahmadinejad vows to push ahead with nuke work

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jan. 05 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed on Thursday to push ahead with the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program, including the resumption of nuclear research and development in its massive uranium enrichment site in Natanz, despite a growing chorus of international concerns. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 05 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed on Thursday to push ahead with the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program, including the resumption of nuclear research and development in its massive uranium enrichment site in Natanz, despite a growing chorus of international concerns.

State television carried Ahmadinejad’s speech to a crowd in the holy city of Qom, where he declared that his hard-line government would defend Iran’s nuclear “rights”.

“Even though they don’t have a single bit of evidence to show that we have diverted our nuclear technology program [to a non-peaceful one”>, they want to deprive us from having [nuclear”> energy. Some have even gone a step further and say that our nation does not have the right to carry out nuclear research”, Ahmadinejad said.

The hard-line President said, however, that his government would push ahead in carrying out nuclear research and other activities.

Earlier this week, Tehran announced that it was resuming sensitive nuclear research at Natanz, something it had previously undertaken not to do under a deal with the European trio of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official and chief nuclear negotiator, said on Tuesday that Tehran was not prepared to negotiate with the international community on its decision to resume suspended nuclear activities, and menacingly warned that “if we lose, others in the region will also lose”.

Speaking on state television, Ali Larijani, secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said that Iran made a mistake by accepting to suspend nuclear research at Natanz in the first place.

The IAEA said in a statement on Tuesday that it had received an official memorandum from the permanent mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran in which Iran made clear that it “has decided to resume from 9 January 2006 those R & D (research and development) on the peaceful nuclear energy programme which has been suspended as part of its expanded voluntary and non-legally binding suspension”.

The UN nuclear watchdog said it was important that Iran “maintains its suspension of all enrichment-related activities as a key confidence-building measure”.