Ahmadinejad: West can’t prevent Iran from building nuke if it decides to

PanARMENIAN.Net - Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Thursday June 23 that Iran is not seeking to build an atom bomb but defiantly added that should it decide to do so "no one can do a damn thing."

"When we say we do not want to make bomb it means we do not want to," Ahmadinejad was quoted by the state television website as saying.

"If we want to make a bomb we are not afraid of anyone and we are not afraid to announce it, no one can do a damn thing," he said during a ceremony inaugurating a sewage treatment plant in southern Tehran.

Iranian officials have staunchly denied Western suspicions that Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme is masking a drive for atomic weapons.

Parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani last year reiterated the denial by quoting a previous fatwa by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in the Islamic republic's affairs, which said "using weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear (arms) is haram (forbidden)."

Ahmadinejad's comments come two weeks after the chief of Iranian atomic organisation Fereydoon Abbasi Davani announced plans to triple Tehran's capacity to enrich uranium to 20 percent level in a move Washington deemed "provocative", according to AFP.