Nuclear issue is ‘closed,’ Iranian president says

The U.S. delegation walked out before Ahmadinejad’s speech.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Tuesday that his country’s disputed nuclear program is closed as a political issue, and said Tehran will disregard U.N. Security Council resolutions imposed by “arrogant powers” to curb its nuclear program.

Instead, he told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly that Iran has decided to pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program “through its appropriate legal path,” the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.

Earlier this month, IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei said Iran’s cooperation with the agency represented an important step, but he urged Tehran to answer all questions — including reported experiments that link enrichment and missile technology — before the end of the year. This week, IAEA technical officials returned to Tehran to deal with the nuclear questions.

When Ahmadinejad was ushered to the podium of the General Assembly to speak, the U.S. delegation walked out, leaving only a low-ranking note-taker to listen to his speech, which indirectly accused the United States and Israel of major human rights violations.

European leaders

The Iranian leader spoke hours after French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned the assembly that allowing Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons would be an “unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world.”

Earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened tougher sanctions against Iran if the country remains intractable on the dispute over its nuclear program.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is purely peaceful and aimed solely at producing nuclear energy. But the United States and key European nations believe the program is a cover for Iran’s real ambition — producing nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad has defied two Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend its enrichment program and imposing escalating sanctions against key figures and organizations involved in the nuclear program. He made clear in his speech that Iran does not intend to comply with them now.

“In the last two years, abusing the Security Council, the arrogant powers have repeatedly accused Iran and even made military threats and imposed illegal sanctions against it,” the Iranian leader said.

“Fortunately, the IAEA has recently tried to regain its legal role as support of the rights of its members while supervising nuclear activities,” he said. “We see this as a correct approach adopted by the agency.”

“Previously, they illegally insisted on politicizing the Iranian nation’s nuclear case, but today, because of the resistance of the Iranian nation, the issue is back to the agency, and I officially announce that in our opinion the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter,” Ahmadinejad said.

‘Appropriate path’

Iran will now “pursue the issue through its appropriate legal path, one that runs through the IAEA, and to disregard unlawful and political impositions by the arrogant powers,” he said.

Though Iran is allowing the IAEA to inspect its known nuclear facilities, it no longer allows inspectors freedom to probe deeper and look for suspicious activities on short notice anywhere in the country as it once did.

El-Baradei recently proposed a compromise under which Iran agreed to answer questions on past nuclear activities, some of them with possible weapons applications, that it had refused to answer in the past. It pledged to respond by the end of the year.

The U.S. initially opposed the plan, fearing it could draw attention away from Iran’s defiance of the U.N. Security Council and its demands that the Islamic Republic suspend uranium enrichment. It later endorsed the plan while emphasizing that Iran must heed the Security Council.

Speaking to reporters later, Ahmadinejad attempted to clarify Tehran’s stance on its nuclear program.

“It’s closed as a political issue,” he said, stressing that it is a legal issue “and therefore should have been examined solely within the framework of the IAEA.”

“However, certain big powers ... have made every effort to turn a simple legal issue into a very loud, controversial, political issue,” he said.