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Iran rejects suspension of enrichment
Associated Press
Thursday, July 12, 2007, (Tehran)
The West should not expect Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said as talks with a delegation from the UN nuclear watchdog ended without any apparent progress.
A new round of talks was expected to start on Thursday.
The hardline president said Iran was ready to remove ambiguities about its disputed programme but refused to give in to demands that the Islamic Republic suspend enrichment, quashing hope that there was a new willingness to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program.
"We are ready to remove any ambiguity, which they may have, in talks and negotiations," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Three hours of talks
The first round of negotiations between the IAEA delegation and Iranian officials ended after more than three hours of talks behind the closed doors Wednesday, IRNA said.
Neither side wished to comment on the discussion, and a new round of talks was due to start on Thursday, the official agency reported.
Iran's delegation was headed by Javad Vaidi, a deputy to Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, the agency said.
Olli Heinonen, Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, headed the five-member delegation from the UN watchdog, IRNA said.
Ahmadinejad said ahead of the talks that Iran seeks "all rights of our nation and there is no room for surrender even to the amount of an iota," IRNA reported.
State-run television said the IAEA delegation was not due to inspect nuclear facilities during its two-day visit.
The talks came two days after IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran had scaled back its uranium enrichment programme suggesting then that there was a new willingness from the government to resolve the international deadlock over its nuclear stance.
If Iran finally honoured its promise to resolve questions surrounding its programme and froze all enrichment activities, "this would influence the actions" of the six nations the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany ElBaradei said, suggesting that the council would hold off on new sanctions.
No plans
But Ahmadinejad said Iran had no plans to suspend enrichment.
"The process of installing centrifuges could be slow or fast. But no one should expect that we will give up our rights and stop the process," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Members of the UN Security Council are preparing to debate a third set of sanctions against the Islamic republic in response to Tehran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for civilian energy or fissile material for a bomb.
Tehran insists it wants to develop an enrichment programme to generate energy, but the US and some of its allies fear that it could misuse it to produce the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
Iran has said it is ready to remove the ambiguities related to its nuclear activities through negotiations but rejects stopping enrichment suspension, a condition set by the West for resumption of talks on the case.
The Security Council first imposed sanctions on Iran in December and modestly increased them in March over Iran's refusal to suspend enrichment.
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