No stopping N-plans: Iran

Striking a defiant posture, Iran told the major powers Tuesday that it is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology including uranium enrichment, but asserted that its entire nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

"It is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced States under the pretext of non-proliferation," foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi told the review conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the United Nations.

The attitude, he said, is in clear violation of the letter and spirit of NPT and destroys the fundamental balance that exists between rights and obligations in the treaty.

Iran protests US 'interference'

Stating that Iran is "eager" to offer assurances and guarantees that its efforts would remain "permanently peaceful," Kharrazi warned that no one should be under any illusion that "objective guarantees can theoretically and practically amount to cesssation or even long-term

suspension of legal activities."

"Let me make absolutely clear that arbitrary and self serving criteria and thresholds regarding proliferation-proof and proliferation-prone technologies and countries can and will only undermine the Treaty," he said.

Next target: Iran

Kharrazi was apparently replying to the United States which has been sharply criticising its decision to resume its uranium enrichment programme and wants the NPT review meet to focus mainly on Iranian and North Korean "nuclear weapon ambitions."