Reuters: Iran’s president voiced defiance on Wednesday as world powers hoped to put the finishing touches on a draft text imposing new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, saying the country would not surrender.
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s president voiced defiance on Wednesday as world powers hoped to put the finishing touches on a draft text imposing new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, saying the country would not surrender.
“You all sit together and exchange papers,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech at a rally in Yazd province in central Iran, broadcast live on state television.
“But you are wrong. You are isolating yourselves,” he said. “If you think … you can make the Iranian nation surrender, you are wrong.”
Six major powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — are considering toughening sanctions against Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, which can be used in a bomb or for peaceful ends.
No date for a vote on proposed new sanctions has been set, but envoys at the United Nations Security Council hope it could take place at the weekend.
The world’s fourth largest oil exporter insists it wants only to generate electricity.
Ahmadinejad made clear Iran would not halt enrichment.
“The Iranian nation will completely defend all of its rights,” he said.
