Iran brushes off new sanctions threat in atom row

Tehran, June 13: Iran's president said today his country was not concerned about any further UN resolutions over Tehran's nuclear programme and would not allow the West to block Iranian scientific progress.

''The Iranian nation does not give the slightest value to your resolutions,'' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech in Semnan, a city east of the capital.

The UN Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran for its failure to halt atomic work which Iran insists has only civilian applications but which the West believes is a covert operation to make atomic bombs.

World powers have threatened a new sanctions resolution if Iran continues to defy UN demands to stop uranium enrichment, a process which can make nuclear power plant fuel or, if enriched to a high-enough level, material for warheads.

''We are in the final stage and if they (world powers) want to continue on the wrong path, they can only take one more step.

The next step, with God's help, ... will not have any impact (on Iran),'' Ahmadinejad said without elaborating.

In what has almost become a tradition when he addresses rallies around the country about the nuclear standoff, the crowd chanted back: ''Nuclear energy is our obvious right.'' Although officials regularly shrug off the impact of sanctions, foreign and even local businesses say they are increasingly wary of investing.

UN sanctions currently just focus on the nuclear programme although one state bank has been targetted. Bankers say worries about risk are pushing up costs on a broader front.

''What the Iranian nation says about the nuclear issue is just one word and that is 'justice'. If there is a law, it should be for everyone,'' the president said.

''(They) don't even want us to have science and technology from us. This injustice will not be acceptable for the Iranian nation,'' he added.

Iran regularly says it is being singled out for unfair treatment over its nuclear ambitions, which it says is aimed at building a network of nuclear power plants so it can preserve its massive oil and gas reserves for exports.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog which routinely sends inspectors to Iran's nuclear sites, says Iran still has to answer questions about its ambitions before its programme can be given a clean bill of health.

REUTERS

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