CNN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed Western proposals for his country to suspend its nuclear program as a condition for talks on Tehran’s atomic ambitions. TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed Western proposals for his country to suspend its nuclear program as a condition for talks on Tehran’s atomic ambitions.
And he said Tehran would make an announcement on new achievements in its nuclear field this April.
“If you seek negotiation, why do you insist on suspension? If we suspend what do we want to talk about,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
“How come your factories and reactors are working day and night while you’re asking our factories and centers to stop it facilities? Our nation will never accept such conditions.”
Iran has repeatedly said uranium enrichment, which the United Nations has demanded it stop, is its right and will not be abandoned. Western countries fear Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at secretly building nuclear weapons.
The Iranian leader also said his country would reveal new technological achievements regularly until early April but he did not give details.
The announcement is set to come on the anniversary of the vote for the Islamic Revolution referendum.
Reports surfaced last fall that Tehran was aiming to produce 3,000 centrifuges and that by March of this year that goal should be met. The report was published by the Iranian Student News Agency and sourced a member of parliament.
Last month, an official with Iran’s nuclear agency denied Iran was building 3,000 centrifuges.
The production of that amount of centrifuges would allow Iran to begin industrial scale production of nuclear fuel — a move that has raised international concern that the country may ultimately produce nuclear weapons.
