Iran Raises Stakes on Nuclear Plans

Mark Townsend, The Observer:

Iran last night invited private firms to join its nuclear programme, further escalating tensions with the West. The country's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told the United Nations general assembly in New York that Tehran held the 'inalienable right' to develop a nuclear capability fuel cycle. His invitation to companies to share its nuclear secrets will prove antagonistic to the US, which earlier yesterday had issued a warning that Iran's atomic ambitions threatened world peace.

Ahmadinejad, who was elected in June, claimed that the involvement of the private sector in its nuclear enrichment programme would prove that Tehran is not producing nuclear weapons.

Hours earlier, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had warned Iran to abandon 'forever' its nuclear weapons ambitions. But Ahmadinejad rejected accusations that the regime was seeking to build nuclear weapons, claiming that its 'religious principles' prevent it from so doing. READ MORE

He also called for a UN committee to be set up to investigate which countries had given Israel the technology to develop nuclear weapons.

Last night's speech in New York by Ahmadinejad follows US-led attempts to gather support for Iran to be referred to the UN security council and face possible sanctions if it did not halt is nuclear ambitions. Tomorrow, the International Atomic Energy Agency will vote on the action it will take over Iran.

The debate over nuclear weapons took a further twist last week when senior diplomats told The Observer that the failure of last week's UN summit to deliver an agreement on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons was jeopardised by the US.

Officials involved in the negotiations have confirmed that the Bush administration's refusal to countenance any form of disarmament blocked efforts to push measures that would prevent regimes seeking to develop a nuclear capability. The news contradicts some reports that the US had been furious that plans to crack down on nuclear proliferation were stripped out of the final UN document.

Iran last month spurned a European package of economic, security and technology incentives for it to abandon sensitive nuclear work and reactivated a factory converting uranium ore into gas.