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 TEHRAN (AFP) — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted on Monday that Iran would not give up its nuclear rights, dismissing calls for Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment, the official IRNA news agency reported.
"It is a repetitive scenario," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in an interview with Malaysian television from Kuala Lumpur where he is to attend the summit of the D8 group of developing nations. "On one side they (world powers) ask to negotiate and on the other they threaten and say that we must give in to their illegal demands and renounce our rights," he added. Ahmadinejad's latest defiant comments come days after Iran gave an undisclosed response to an offer from six world powers aiming to break the deadlock in the nuclear standoff. The proposal from the world powers offers Iran technological incentives in exchange for suspending uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be used to make a nuclear weapon. "We are in favour of dialogue but we will negotiate in a just atmosphere and on common subjects because negotiations in an unbalanced climate will have no result," Ahmadinejad added. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said earlier that he did not think that Iran's response to the package "provides great hope. But it gives a little bit of hope." EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has been leading talks with Iran, also said on Monday he hoped to meet later this month with Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Solana refused to give details of the Iranian response, which was delivered in Brussels on Friday. The United States has never ruled out military action to end the Iranian defiance and concerns a strike could be imminent mounted after it emerged Iran's arch enemy Israel had carried out dry runs for an attack. Hitting out at the "satanic desires" of US President George W. Bush, Ahmadinejad shrugged off the idea that the United States could attack Iran. "Even if some countries like Israel and the United States join forces they will not dare to attack Iran and they know it very well," Ahmadinejad said. "They know that they cannot use the language of force against Iran and must bend in the face of the will of the Iranian people," he added. |
