November 18, 2007	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 07, 1428

PESHAWAR, Nov 17: An Iranian diplomat on Saturday said that his country would continue its peaceful nuclear programme despite opposition by some anti-Iran western nations.

Addressing journalists at the Peshawar press club, Iran’s consul-general in Peshawar Mohammad Iqbal Ali Asghari said the country would continue an independent foreign policy.

Mr Asghari said: “A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed ElBaradei on Iran’s nuclear project is our political and moral victory. Iran believes in negotiations to sort out its differences with hostile forces, but it will never back out from its principled stand on vial issues”.

He said Mr Baradei had cleared Tehran of its alleged involvement in processing nuclear devices in shape of P-1 and P-2 types of centrifuges.

He said that Iran had time and again denied that it was involved in atomic bomb-making process at any of its facilities, but some of countries created a doubt in the western capitals that Tehran was engaged in bomb developing programme.

He said that some time ago Chinese and Russian diplomats refused to attend a US-sponsored meeting on Iran’s nuclear programme.

He said the US had tried to isolate Iran on the nuclear issue, but 80 per cent of the nations refused to buy the US-sponsored propaganda.

He said that Iran had been under immense pressure for four years for a crime which it had not committed. He said that various IAEA teams had visited Iran and inspected its nuclear projects and found nothing repugnant to the IAEA charter.

He said that Iran was a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and had a right to construct peaceful nuclear projects for its scientific and industrial requirements.

He said Mr Baradei had admitted that Iran was not violating IAEA laws and “not making an atomic bomb” and the US and its western allies must stop propaganda against Iran.

Replying to a question, Mr Asghari said Iran was committed to materializing the gas pipeline project with Pakistan. “We call it peace gas pipeline,” he said.

He said that Iran would support any regional bloc, which was aiming at to promote trade and economic cooperation among Asian states.

He said that Iran, Turkey and Pakistan were already members of the Economic Cooperation Organisation.

He said that some of the Central Asian Republics and Afghanistan had also joined it and more states could be brought at its forum in the future.