[Mb-civic] FW: Ahmadinejad damns 'insult' but wants to negotiate !

[villasudjuan]

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 17:24:16 -0400
Subject: Ahmadinejad damns 'insult' but wants to negotiate !

Yahoo News

Iran defiant on nuclear as Ahmadinejad damns 'insult'

Tue Aug 9,12:26 PM ET
Iran expressed defiance in the face of an emergency meeting on its nuclear
programme, with President Mahmood Ahmadinejad dismissing a European Union
offer of nuclear cooperation as an "insult".

Accusing Europe of "living in the last century", Ahmadinejad said he still
wanted talks that are teetering on collapse following Tehran's decision to
resume uranium conversion activities to continue, but with different
proposals.

"We are ready to continue the negotiations with the Europeans. I have
initiatives and new propositions that I am going to announce after my
government is formed," the student agency ISNA quoted the new president as
telling UN chief Kofi Annan in a telephone conversation on Monday.

But he described an offer of nuclear, commercial and political cooperation
made on Friday by the Europeans in exchange for Iran renouncing
ultra-sensitive nuclear activities as an "insult to the Iranian people".

"The Europeans talk as though the Iranian people were a backward people, as
if they were still in the last century when they dominated our country," he
said.

Ahmadinejad's tough rhetoric appears to confirm fears that he will adopt a
tougher stance on the nuclear issue than his reformist predecessor,
especially after the appointment of hardliner Ali Larijani on Monday as
atomic supremo.

News of his comments came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
met in emergency session following the resumption on Monday of uranium
conversion -- the precursor to enrichment -- at a plant on the outskirts of
the central city of Isfahan.

In a crucial symbolic act, seals placed by the IAEA on the facility back in
November were to be removed on Wednesday after the UN agency finished
putting in place surveillance cameras, officials said.

"Resuming conversion in Isfahan is the will of the people and in no way
constitutes an illegal and unilateral action," said Ahmadinejad.

The vehemence of Ahmadinejad's defence of Iran's right to the nuclear fuel
cycle was echoed by Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani, who said Iran should not
worry about the possibility it will now be referred to the UN Security
Council.

"Should we accept humiliation, the sanctions, see ourselves be punished, or
should we resist? I think that we should resist," Shamkhani told
journalists.

"What are they going to do at the Security Council, impose sanctions on us?
Sanctions have already been imposed on us," he added.

Although Shamkhani judged it "probable" that Iran would be sent to the UN
Security Council over its nuclear programme, he predicted that this would
not be happening in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's IAEA meeting.

"It is not as though they are going to send us tomorrow to the Security
Council.

"I think that they will adopt a resolution against Iran which will ask why
it has stopped applying the Paris agreement" concluded in November with the
Europeans under which Iran suspended uranium enrichment and conversion
activities.

The Islamic republic's defiance won approval in the hardline press with
Jomhuri Eslami saying that the "next step is Natanz", referring to Iran's
nuclear enrichment plant. "We have won," it said.

For Ressalat, the "only possibility of an understanding with the Europeans
is that they acknowledge our right".

Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
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URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050809/wl_mideast_afp/irannucleariaea_050
809161821;_ylt=AopVHCNG16OfD4P5Aj3nmyNSw60A;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVR
PUCUl


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