AFP: An exiled Iranian opposition group Tuesday called on the United Nations nuclear watchdog to take Iran’s resuming uranium enrichment work before the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions. The head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Radjavi, addressed the group’s appeal to the governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meeting in
emergency session in Vienna. AFP
VIENNA – An exiled Iranian opposition group Tuesday called on the United Nations nuclear watchdog to take Iran’s resuming uranium enrichment work before the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
The head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Radjavi, addressed the group’s appeal to the governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meeting in emergency session in Vienna.
The group denounced new Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad for naming a fellow hardliner, Ali Laridjani, to head Iran’s nuclear program, according to a statement sent to AFP.
“There no longer exists any more reasons to hesitate or delay putting the nuclear issue before the UN Security Council,” the statment said, adding that one of the chief reasons Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted Ahmadinejad to become president was to put the country’s resources toward making atomic weapons.
Iran resumed nuclear activities Monday at a uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Tehran, after having suspended the work in a deal with European Union negotiators Britain, France and Germany.
The United States claims the work is a front for developing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran strongly denies, claiming that it has the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy.
The Iranian opposition’s statement also called on Europe “to abandon its support” of Iran’s current regime, “the only state sponsoring terrorism in the contemporary world.”