January 31, 2008	Thursday	Muharram 21, 1429

TEHRAN, Jan 30: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Tehran was close to its target of producing nuclear energy and launched a new tirade against Israel as world powers seek to impose new sanctions on Iran.

“The nuclear issue was the most important challenge since the (1979 Islamic) revolution but with the help of God and your resistance, it is ending in favour of the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad told cheering crowds.

“We are moving towards the summit on the nuclear path,” he said. “Iranians... will not back down one iota in defence of their rights,” he said in a speech in Bushehr, the site of Iran’s first nuclear power plant which Tehran said on Wednesday is to be commissioned in October.

Iran has been slapped with two sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment and a third package is currently being considered by the Security Council.

The proposed new measures include an outright travel ban by officials involved in Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes and inspections of shipments to and from Iran if there are suspicions of prohibited goods.

Ahmadinejad also renewed his verbal attack on arch-foe Israel, saying its days are numbered and predicting that the “filthy Zionist entity” will fall sooner or later.

Widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel accuses the Islamic republic of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of its nuclear programme.

“I advise you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line,” Ahmadinejad told world powers of the Jewish state which Tehran does not recognise.

“It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall,” he predicted.—AFP