We will not change nuclear policy: Iran tells UN

United Nations, Mar 25: Iran will not be coerced by ''pressure and intimidation'' into giving up its peaceful nuclear programme, Tehran told the UN Security Council after new sanctions were imposed on the country.

''I can assure you that pressure and intimidation will not change Iranian policy,'' Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said. ''Iran does not seek confrontation nor does it want anything beyond its inalienable rights.'' The 15-member Security Council unanimously approved a package of financial and arms sanctions, aimed at pressuring Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, which can be used to generate electricity or to make bombs.

''Suspension is neither an option nor a solution,'' Mottaki said. ''The Security Council's decision to try to coerce Iran into suspension of its peaceful nuclear programme is a gross violation'' of the UN Charter.

''The world must know -- and it does -- that even the harshest political and economic sanctions or other threats are far too weak to coerce the Iranian nation to retreat from their legal and legitimate demands,'' he said.

Mottaki said the Security Council resolution was targeting the people of Iran by putting sanctions on the country's defense, economic and educational institutions, particularly a freeze on the assets of the state-owned Bank Sepah.

''The sanctions in this resolution are clearly targeting an independent, proud and tireless nation with thousands of years of culture and civilization,'' he said. ''What can harming hundreds of thousands of depositors in Bank Sepah ... mean other than confronting ordinary Iranians?'' Mottaki appeared at the council instead of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who canceled his appearance before the 15-member council because visas for his flight crew were delivered too late for his private plane to arrive in New York before the vote. Washington disputes this.

''These resolutions ... are and have always been, a part of the problem and an impediment to finding a real and mutually acceptable solution,'' Mottaki said.

The minister retraced Iran's history with the Security Council, recalling how the major powers had backed and supplied former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with intelligence, weapons and aircraft, during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

He also noted that Iran had suspended its uranium enrichment in exchange for a package of European incentives that did not materialize.

''We had an experience of suspension, but there were neither results nor solutions. If the time they have spent to insist on suspension, and the efforts they have exerted to impose sanctions, were invested for a genuine negotiation, they would have yielded much better results,'' Mottaki said.

Reuters

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