Wednesday, May 4 2005 09:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

United Nations: Striking a defiant posture, Iran yesterday (May 3, 2005) told the major powers that it is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology including uranium enrichment, but asserted that its entire nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

"It is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced States under the pretext of non-proliferation," its Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the review conference on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The attitude, he said, is in clear violation of the letter and spirit of NPT and destroys the fundamental balance that exists between rights and obligations in the treaty.

Stating that Iran is "eager" to offer assurances and guarantees that its efforts would remain "permanently peaceful", Kharrazi warned that no one should be under any illusion that "objective guarantees can theoretically and practically amount to cessation or even long-term suspension of legal activities".

"Let me make absolutely clear that arbitrary and self serving criteria and thresholds regarding proliferation-proof and proliferation-prone technologies and countries can and will only undermine the Treaty," he said.

Kharrazi was apparently replying to the United States, which has been sharply criticising its decision to resume its uranium enrichment programme and wants the NPT review meet to focus mainly on Iranian and North Korean "nuclear weapon ambitions".