Iran proclaimed yesterday that it was no longer committed to the agreements made last October with the EU trio of Britain, France and Germany and would resume uranium enrichment.
"We made an agreement with the European Union trio last October in Tehran, which also included a temporary halt to uranium enrichment, but as the Europeans were not committed to the Tehran Declaration, therefore we also lift the temporary halt to uranium enrichment," Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief negotiator on nuclear issues, told reporters.
Rowhani gave a press conference yesterday morning after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a resolution on Friday criticizing Iran for failing fully to disclose the extent of its nuclear program.
"Details on Iran's new uranium enrichment program will be announced in the coming days," said Rowhani, who is also secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
"We do not pay much attention to the new resolution as the whole issue has once again been politicized with the final aim to deprive Iran of peaceful nuclear technology," he said.
He blamed the IAEA for poisoning the atmosphere in Vienna against Iran with false information, referring to IAEA charges that Iran had not informed the IAEA about its importation of 150 magnets for gas centrifuges used in uranium enrichment.
The IAEA later admitted that its initial claim about the importation of magnets was not correct and Iran in return demanded a change to the critical resolution.
"We however continue cooperation with the IAEA but stress settling the dispute over Iran's nuclear program at the earliest term and without politicization," said Rowhani, who is also a potential candidate to succeed Iranian President Mohammad Khatami next year.
Rowhani also said Iran would not withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran had even agreed on further IAEA inspections in Arak and Isfahan in central Iran, where a heavy water reactor is planned and where nuclear pollution had been reported by the inspectors, he said.
"The new resolution has not created any new commitment for Iran and there will also be no halt to the heavy water reactor plan in Isfahan," he said, referring to an earlier demand by the EU trio.
The cleric reiterated that, contrary to US claims, Iran had no secret plans for nuclear weapons, adding "the IAEA acknowledgement of this fact has left only a few pages left from the rather very thick Iranian nuclear file at the beginning."
The IAEA unanimously passed a resolution on Friday criticizing Iran for failing to fully disclose the extent of its nuclear program.
International investigators from the Vienna-based UN watchdog had been given contradictory and incomplete information, the agency said.
The strongly worded resolution is a stinging rebuke to Tehran but stops short of threatening Iran with UN Security Council sanctions.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS