Top Iranian officials slammed “atomic criminal” the US yesterday and called for its suspension from the UN atomic watchdog as Tehran hosted a two-day nuclear disarmament conference.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to the conference, said the use of nuclear weapons was haram, or religiously prohibited, and branded Washington as the world’s “only atomic criminal.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went a step further and called for Washington’s suspension from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) along with all other nations who possess nuclear arms.
PHOTO: EPA
“Only the US government has committed an atomic crime. The world’s only atomic criminal lies and presents itself as being against nuclear weapons proliferation, while it has not taken any serious measures in this regard,” Khamenei said in his message, which was read out at the start of the meeting.
Ahmadinejad, under whose presidency Iran has pushed ahead with its controversial nuclear program, called for a global supervision of nuclear disarmament.
“An independent international group which plans and oversees nuclear disarmament and prevents proliferation should be set up,” he said as he opened the conference attended by several foreign ministers and officials from the UN.
He said those who “possess, have used or threatened to use nuclear weapons be suspended from the IAEA and its board of governors, especially the US which has used a weapon made of atomic waste in the Iraq war.”
Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have been infuriated in recent days with Washington over its new nuclear policy, which limits the countries against which it might use its nuclear arsenal, but singles out Iran and North Korea as exceptions.
Ahmadinejad even called for the review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of which Iran is a member and so considers its right to enrich uranium despite three sets of UN sanctions.
“The review of the NPT must be done by ... countries who do not possess nuclear arms,” he said.
The Tehran conference, which comes just days after Washington held its high-profile nuclear summit, aims to “discuss nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, which are the bases of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Iranian atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying on Friday.
Salehi said the conference would serve as preparation for the next NPT review meeting in New York early next month.
Iran criticized the 47-nation nuclear disarmament summit in Washington hosted by US President Barack Obama, on the grounds that the US holds one of the world’s largest stocks of nuclear weapons.
At the summit, Obama pressed China and other UN Security Council skeptics to back a fourth set of sanctions against Iran for its controversial uranium enrichment program that Western states say masks a drive for atomic arms.
Foreign ministers from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, the Central African Republic, Oman, Turkmenistan, Armenia and Swaziland are participating in the Tehran conference, while Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are represented by their deputy foreign ministers, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.
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