October 07, 2007	Sunday	Ramazan 24, 1428

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6: Secretary-general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned on Friday that any military action against Iran would lead to a ‘disaster’ that would leave no nation untouched.

“If, God forbid, any military action takes place,” he said, “that would be the beginning of a big disaster for everybody, and nobody in the world would be immune from this disaster”.

Addressing a press conference, Mr Ihsanoglu said it was the OIC’s position that all countries had the right to develop peaceful nuclear facilities for their own benefit under the international commitments of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), its preference was for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

“We hope for a free world – a world free of nuclear weapons,” he said, highlighting the example of Central Asian countries which had abandoned their nuclear weapons and created a nuclear-free zone. The OIC hoped that the pattern would be repeated in the Middle East, with no exceptions. “When there are double standards, when there are different norms, we lose the validity, the credibility of these norms,” he added.

He said the current issues related to Iran’s nuclear programme should be settled peacefully through dialogue. That dialogue should be between Iran and the IAEA. He called recent news that Iran would provide responses to questions from the IAEA a ‘step forward’.