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Iran argues nuclear case in letter to "world"
Iran sent a letter to the world's top diplomats on Tuesday to argue its case in the deepening nuclear row with the West, official media reported. "I would like to emphasize that Iran's nuclear program is completely peaceful," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki wrote in the letter, published by news agency IRNA in Farsi. "This program is not a threat against any country."The agency said the letter was sent to "the world's foreign ministers" but did not specify whether it went to the United States and Iran's other western foes, who fear the Islamic Republic wants to use the program to pursue nuclear weapons. Tehran says it only aims to generate electricity so that, as the world's fourth-largest crude producer, it can export more oil and gas. Mottaki said Iran had shown goodwill "even beyond its legal commitments" to remove ambiguities about its atomic activities, working with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "All Iran's nuclear activities ... are based on the agency's charter and the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), under the agency's full and continuous supervision," said his letter, which ran to four pages on IRNA. The IAEA said in a report last week that Iran had made important strides towards clarifying past nuclear work, as part of an August agreement between the two sides. Posted by: Fred 2007-11-21 |
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