(PTI): One day after the IAEA confirmed the non-diversion of Iran’s nuclear program, the presidents of France and the US accuse Iran of attempting to obtain nuclear weaponry.
In its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, released on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who played host to his American counterpart Barack Obama on Saturday, said Iran could have “peaceful” nuclear power “but not a military nuclear capability and they have to accept this.”
“The United States and France are together on this issue, we do not want nuclear proliferation,” he told reporters after his meeting with the US president.
Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has repeatedly said that weapons of mass destruction have no place in the country’s defense doctrine.
In 2005, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a binding religious decree (fatwa) banning the “production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons”
Sarkozy, on Wednesday, met with Iran’s Foreign Minster Manouchehr Mottaki who reportedly handed the French chief executive a message from Ayatollah Khamenei, a senior French official said Saturday.
The unnamed official told the Associated Press that Sarkozy intends to discuss the contents of the letter with Obama during their meeting.
Obama also spoke after the meeting only to call Iran’s possible possession of nuclear weapons a profound danger for the entire world. “We can’t afford a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
The American president however failed to mention the sixth-largest nuclear power in the world, Israel which is the sole possessor of an atomic arsenal in the Middle East and has at least 100 bunker-buster bombs.
Tel Aviv is not a signatory to the NPT and pursues a policy of ’strategic ambiguity’, according to which it neither admits nor denies the dimensions of its nuclear activities.
Obama, who arrived in France Friday night, will leave the French capital on Sunday.
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