|
Rafsanjani: West cannot force Iran to abandon nuclear know-how |
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 23 May 2006 |
Iran Focus
 Tehran, Iran, May 23 – Iran’s former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Tuesday that the West could not force Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, the government-run news agency Fars reported.
The West was trying to take away “nuclear knowledge” from Tehran, Rafsanjani, who chairs the State Expediency Council, told leaders of the hard-line political group Motalefeh.
“The West wants to take away this know-how from the Iranian people, but this is not possible”, he said.
Motalefeh is short for Jamiat’haye Motalefeh Islami, or Unified Islamic Associations. It came into existence in the 1960s as a clandestine radical Islamic fundamentalist group supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Its members assassinated the Shah’s Prime Minister Ali Mansour and several other political figures. Its leaders, who hailed from Tehran’s Bazaar, became multi-billionaire entrepreneurs after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
|
