Rouhani says Iran will not accept ‘nuclear apartheid’

May 12, 2014 - 10:38 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran will not accept "nuclear apartheid" but is willing to offer more transparency over its atomic activities, President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday, May 11, ahead of new talks with world powers, according to AFP.

Iran and the P5+1 group of nations will start hammering out a draft accord Tuesday aimed at ending a decade-long standoff over suspicions that the Islamic republic is concealing military objectives.

"We have nothing to put on the table and offer to them but transparency. That's it. Our nuclear technology is not up for negotiation," Rouhani, referring to the West, said in remarks broadcast on state television.

"Iran will not retreat one step in the field of nuclear technology... we will not accept nuclear apartheid," he said.

Hardliners accuse Rouhani of making concessions for little gain under talks that have started to reverse the political isolation Iran grappled with under his hardline predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Other skeptics of the nuclear talks, including members of the U.S. Congress, doubt if Rouhani is genuine in seeking a lasting agreement.

The world's leading powers have long suspected that Iran is developing the capability to build an atom bomb, an allegation that Tehran has repeatedly denied.

"We want to tell the world they cannot belittle the Iranian nation; they have to respect it," Rouhani said.

Iran has suffered years of economic hardship exacerbated by international sanctions designed to coerce the country into curbing its nuclear work.

A potential deal under discussion between Iranian negotiators and counterparts from the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany -- under the P5+1 grouping -- this week will focus on the scope of Iran's nuclear activities. Such an agreement will aim to render Iran incapable of making any push toward atomic weapons while removing the sanctions.

The negotiators have a July 20 deadline, set by an interim deal reached in November that put temporary limits on Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for modest sanctions relief.

ИРИ и МАГАТЭ согласовали вопросы по ядерному реактору в Араке

Иран: переговоры экспертов полезны

AFP. Iran won't accept 'nuclear apartheid': Rouhani

Iran's nuclear program

Iran's leaders have worked to pursue nuclear energy technology since the 1950s, spurred by the launch of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. It made steady progress, with Western help, through the early 1970s. But concern over Iranian intentions followed by the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 effectively ended outside assistance. Iran was known to be reviving its civilian nuclear programs during the 1990s, but revelations in 2002 and 2003 of clandestine research into fuel enrichment and conversion raised international concern that Iran's ambitions had metastasized beyond peaceful intent. Although Iran has consistently denied allegations it seeks to develop a bomb, the September 2009 revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom -constructed under the radar of international inspectors - deepened suspicion surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions.