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Vienna: Iran, rebuffing Western criticism at a meeting on the fraying nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said yesterday its atomic programme was being misrepresented as a quest for bombs and this could bring "grave consequences".
Tehran says its bid to enrich uranium is for electricity only but has been hit with UN sanctions for refusing to suspend the programme. The standoff has bogged down the start of the Vienna meeting aimed at finding ways to shore up the NPT.
Iran on Monday threw the Vienna gathering into doubt when it blocked consensus on an agenda it feared would single it out as the prime peril to the NPT. Yesterday Iran lashed out bitterly at what it called illegal and unjustified pressure on it.
"If Iran were not party to the NPT, it would have been faced with such an unfair situation. Penalising an NPT party on political grounds shall have grave consequences," Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said in a strident address.
"[We] are ready to negotiate ... on mechanisms that could guarantee the non-diversion of Iran's peaceful [nuclear] activities in the future," he said. "Iran stresses that there is no capacity at any level for the production of nuclear material useable for nuclear weapons."
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