In an interview to national English newspaper The Hindu, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that he still believes in dialogue but did not like the continued pressure and insistence on taking away the rights that his country has. Ahmadinejad said that as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guarantees Iran a right to enrich fuel for peaceful purposes and accused the West of trying to alienate these rights from his nation will “obviously” make his country “change” its mind on continuing with the treaty.
Insisting that its nuclear technology was indigenous, he said that this “end result” of their scientific endeavor” and “nobody can take this away from us.” Ahmadinejad said that his country was in the “middle” of looking at the European Union proposal and was due to respond by August 22, but sounded exasperated that the UN Security Council went ahead with a resolution. Concluding that the reason for this was because the West was trying to “bully” his nation, he accused the West of “not looking for a dialogue” but confrontation. Dismissing pressure from the US, he warned the European nations that “they will “regret the miscalculation they have made.”
Ahmadinejad insists that his country was “firmly inside” the covenants of “the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and NPT” and says that he is “still interested in talking if there are parties out there which might have questions.” He also indicated a “strong likelihood” that Iran would present “its own package of proposals to the Europeans later this month.” He was skeptical of the “whole idea of presenting” his nation “with a package” and called it a “political exercise more than anything else” but said he was interested in continuing with negotiations.
The interviewers did not ask him why his nation had secretively imported nuclear enriching dual-use technology from disgrace Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. They also did not seem to ask him why Iran did not disclose the materials it had bough from Khan and has still not revealed what was bought and the intentions behind it. It is also not clear what part this import played in their “scientific endeavor.”
