|
TEHRAN: Iran said on Sunday that any
suspension of sensitive nuclear activities was not open to
discussion, the day before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected
to announce a major development on its atomic drive.
“We will not
discuss the legitimate rights of Iran,” foreign ministry spokesman
Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference.
UN Security
Council powers, which fear Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear
weapon, have slapped two sets of UN sanctions against Tehran over
its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.
“We can
negotiate about the concerns of the different parties and the
nondiversion of the Iranian nuclear program,” said Hosseini,
referring to Iran’s insistence that its atomic drive is peaceful.
“We are doing
nothing that is against the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and so
there is no reason or logic for a suspension,” he said.
Ahmadinejad is on
Monday due to visit the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz—Iran’s
most sensitive nuclear site—to mark the Islamic republic’s day
of nuclear technology.
He is expected to
use the occasion to make a major announcement on Iran’s nuclear
program after repeatedly promising “good news” in the near
future.
Iran has said it
wants to install 3,000 uranium enriching centrifuges at an
underground facility at Natanz and observers are expecting the
announcement to refer to progress in Iran’s enrichment.
Uranium
enrichment is highly sensitive as the process can be used both to
make nuclear energy and the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran
insists it has every right to the full nuclear fuel cycle.
 --AFP
|
