Iran opens 'alternative' nuke summit

Iranian leaders: US an atomic criminal, should be expelled from IAEA.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
mahmoud ahmadinejad yalla yalla 311 (photo credit: AP)
mahmoud ahmadinejad yalla yalla 311
(photo credit: AP)
TEHERAN, Iran — Iran's supreme leader told a nuclear disarmament conference in Teheran on Saturday that the United States' atomic weapons are a tool of terror and intimidation.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said America deceptively calls for non-proliferation while holding on to its own weapons and failing to confront Israel, which is widely believed to possess nuclear bombs.
The two-day conference appeared timed as a counterweight to US President Barack Obama's 47-nation summit in Washington last week to discuss nuclear security. Obama did not invite Iran, which the US fears is using a civilian nuclear program as cover to develop a weapons capability. Iran denies that and says its nuclear work is only for peaceful purposes such as power generation.
"The deceptive policy by the sole nuclear offender, which falsely claims to be advocating the non-proliferation of nuclear arms while doing nothing substantive for this cause, will never succeed," Khamenei said.
Iran's conference brought together representatives from 60 countries, including China, Russia, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey and France, as well as delegates from international bodies and non-governmental organizations, according to Iranian media.
Khamenei, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and several other senior Iranian officials took turns at the podium to warn that America's nuclear policy was endangering the world and encouraging nations to consider withdrawing from the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
If the US meant what it said about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, Israel would not have been able to "turn the occupied land of Palestine into an arsenal with huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons," Khamenei said.
At last week's gathering in Washington, world leaders endorsed a call from Obama to secure all nuclear materials around the globe within four years to keep them out of the grasp of terrorists.
Several countries, including Ukraine, Mexico and Canada, declared their intention to give up highly enriched uranium as a step toward making it harder for terrorist groups or criminal gangs to steal or acquire a key ingredient in the making of atomic weapons.
Russia and the US also signed a deal to dispose of tons of weapons-grade plutonium, although that won't start for eight years.
Three sets of UN sanctions have failed to pressure Iran to stop its own uranium enrichment work, which it says is only to produce fuel for power stations. The technology is of international concern because it could give Iran a pathway to warhead production.
Russia's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Rybakov, called for moreconfidence building measures from Tehran to allay internationalconcerns over its nuclear program.
"We need to reinforce, reinstall full confidence in the exclusivelypeaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program," Rybakov said Saturdayon Iran's English-language Press TV.
Teheran was angered by Obama's announcement this month of a new USnuclear policy in which he pledged America would not use atomic weaponsagainst nations that do not have them. Iran and North Korea werepointedly excluded from the non-use pledge, and Iranian leaders tookthat as an implicit threat.
"The insistence of these governments on holding and increasing thedestructive powers of these weapons ... serves as a tool of collectiveintimidation and terror," Khamenei said of the US and othernuclear-armed nations.