- Iran's former president said today that the country will
develop nuclear energy despite US hostility, and he warned the US against
a military "adventure" in Iran.
-
- "The Persian Gulf is not a region where they can
have fireworks and Iran is not a country where they can come for an
adventure,"
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers.
-
- "It is not acceptable that developed countries
generate
70% or 80% of their electricity from nuclear energy and tell Iran, a great
and powerful nation, that it cannot have nuclear electricity. Iran does
not accept this," he said.
-
- Mr Rafsanjani is arguably the second most powerful man
in Iran behind the current supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
He is often seen as a pragmatist who wants to restore diplomatic relations
with the US, and is a potential front-runner in Iran's forthcoming
presidential
elections in June.
-
- Last week, in an interview with an American newspaper,
Mr Rafsanjani, 70, said he was not concerned about tough statements on
Iran from the Bush administration, which he labelled
"nonsense".
-
- During a visit to France this week, US secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice called on Iran to abandon what she says is a nuclear
weapons
programme, and pointedly refused to rule out an attack on atomic
sites.
-
- In January, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh
reported that US special forces were already operating inside Iran,
selecting
sites for future air strikes.
-
- Mr Rafsanjani's statement comes the day after North Korea
sent a message of solidarity to Iran on the 26th anniversary of the Islamic
Republic, praising its defence of its independence - a move likely to
further
annoy the US.
-
- Yesterday, North Korea declared it had a nuclear bomb
and said it was indefinitely suspending participation in multilateral talks
with the US and regional powers on its nuclear programme.
-
- If Iran were also to become a nuclear outlaw it would
deliver a possibly fatal blow to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,
opening the door to other nations to defy the US.
-
- Mr Rafsanjani today repeated that Iran could not give
up uranium enrichment, a key process in making nuclear fuel, but held open
the possibility of a diplomatic solution through assurances the fuel would
not be used to make bombs.
-
- "This confidence has to be built in the next few
months. When this period is over, we will, God willing, continue enrichment
and nuclear technology," he said, stressing Iran's cooperation with
the UN atomic watchdog.
-
- Iran suspended uranium enrichment in November as a
gesture
before talks with EU nations, which have tried to persuade the country
to end its nuclear power programme in return for economic benefits. But
the suspension was expected to last no more than a few months.
-
- Iran's president Mohammad Khatami said on Wednesday that
the country would never give up its progress towards nuclear technology,
promising a "burning hell" for any aggressor.
-
- In 2002, US president George Bush named Iran and North
Korea as part of an "axis of evil" together with Iraq. Mr Bush
now faces the paradox of threatening Iran, which does not yet have nuclear
weapons, while encouraging negotiations with North Korea, which already
does.
-
- Some analysts have said North Korea might be raising
the stakes while US attention is focused on Iran's nuclear programmes in
order to obtain better terms. North Korea has engaged in such brinkmanship
in the past.
-
- But Gary Samore, a non-proliferation expert and director
of studies at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, told
Reuters that no compromise was in sight.
-
- "Iran's preference is to achieve a nuclear weapons
capability. They have been working on that for 20 year and it's a deeply
seated desire on the part of the political elite."
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1411160,00.html
|
