TEHRAN, April 29 (RIA Novosti) - Iran's president said Saturday his country would never renounce its right to use nuclear energy for civilian purposes and would carry on with uranium enrichment.
Speaking on national television, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "Iran will never negotiate with anyone on its legitimate right to use peaceful nuclear energy."
He called on the United Nations Security Council to respect the Islamic Republic's right to develop nuclear engineering for civilian purposes and urged it to return the Iranian dossier to the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
"The UN Security Council should act in keeping with international accords and treaties. It must show if this international institute is indeed a guarantor of peace and security for all nations, or it has turned into a tool for world powers to manipulate [smaller states]," Ahmadinejad said.
He said the countries producing nuclear weapons and those who had ever used such weaponry had no right to pressure Tehran into renouncing its legitimate right to develop civilian nuclear technologies.
"We are willing to use every opportunity to establish interaction and cooperation with all countries possessing peaceful nuclear technologies so as to find ways to prevent deviation in the process of making nuclear fuel by producer nations."
Ahmadinejad spoke a day after the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, confirmed in a report that Iran had failed to meet the UN Security Council's April 28 deadline to halt all uranium enrichment activities, which Western countries believe to be aimed at developing nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei's report deepened a rift between the council's five permanent member states, with the U.S., France and Britain pressing for a new militarily enforceable resolution to make Iran abandon its nuclear program and Russia and China insisting the issue be resolved through diplomacy.
