TEHRAN, 20 August 2003 — Iran’s supreme leader has said his country will never give up its nuclear technology under pressure from the United States and others, who are urging Tehran to agree to more stringent inspections of its programs.
Ali Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian ambassadors late Monday that “the position of the United States and certain Western countries, which require Iran to give up nuclear technology is unsuitable, unjust and oppressive, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will never accept these requests.”
“The conditions in which the United States deals with the rest of the world as a creditor, always asking for more, make any weakness and surrender the greatest strategic error,” the state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying. “Iranian nuclear science is indigenous and peaceful, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on religious principles, will never use weapons of mass destruction,” Khamenei added.
On Monday Tehran said it was still discussing with the International Atomic Energy Agency whether to allow snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites. “We are still discussing the additional protocol” to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said. Tehran is under strong international pressure to prove it is not secretly developing atomic weapons by signing the extra NPT clause, which would allow UN inspectors to descend on suspect sites without warning.
The IAEA’s board of governors will review the Iranian case on Sept. 8, with the threat that it might be forwarded to the UN Security Council.
