In the face of new American openness to dialogue, Iran on Sunday offered not reciprocity but a fierce counter-offensive, accusing Washington of cooperating with Israel and India on nuclear issues ahead, of a major meeting on the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Reuters news agency reported.
The agency obtained four documents prepared for the meeting by Iran which all point to the fact that Teheran is trying hard to deflect attention from its nuclear program by blaming the United States for breaching the NPT because of discriminating policies in favor of its allies.
The signatories to the treaty are slated to meet Monday for a preparatory meeting ahead of a major conference in 2010 that many countries hope will result in an overhaul of the landmark 1970 treaty.
The NPT is aimed at halting the spread of nuclear arms globally and demands that countries with atomic arsenals take steps to get rid of them.
Israel has never been a signatory to the treaty and has never overtly admitted to having a nuclear program.
In the four papers Iran's delegation submitted for the May 4-15 NPT conference, Teheran alleges that Washington is in clear breach of the treaty by developing new atomic weapons and providing nuclear aid to Israel and India.
India, too, does not abide by the NPT and has been developing its weapons program since the 'Smiling Buddha' experiment in 1974.
Iran, however, is a signatory of the NPT but has insisted that its nuclear program is geared at providing energy. The Islamic republic remains determined to press on with its nuclear program despite three rounds of UN sanctions and additional US-imposed sanctions.
If the program is not strictly civilian as the Mullahs claim, a fact on which the West is skeptical, Iran would be in breach of the treaty.
Iran also accused Britain and France of working to prevent it and other developing countries from having complete nuclear energy programs, Reuters reported.
Diplomats from developing nations say Iran has many supporters on this issue due to fears among poorer states that the rich Western powers want to keep their monopoly on nuclear technology.
However, Iran's tactic may not prove fruitful in the upcoming conference as US President Barack Obama called for a "world without nuclear weapons" on his recent European tour.
While Obama's call was seen by critics as more rhetorical than a real call to action, it still signals a shift from the policy of his predecessor George W. Bush.
In the documents prepared for the meeting, Iran made no mention of the fact that the United States recently offered direct talks between the two countries, also a shift from American policy on Iran ever since the Islamic republic in 1979.
"Iran is very worried that Obama's commitment to disarmament ... will make it harder to portray the Americans as the enemy," a Western diplomat was quoted by Reuters as saying. "The same goes for Obama's engagement policy. So they [Iran] want to come out punching."
