Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid- Reza Asefi said Sunday that Wshington should stop fanning distrust, spreading suspision and continuing to raise excuses against peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Asefi said the US has no right and can not condition countries' economic progress and development on its discriminatory stances and interpretations. According to IRNA, he said the claims of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an interview with the US daily Los Angeles Times should be interpreted as Washington's acknowledgment to attempts to discredit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
He added that the claims show clearly that the US administration has founded its policy on institutionalization of discrimination and double-standards worldwide and is arrogantly and unilaterally trying to undermine international institutions and conventions.
Iran's right for use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is "absolute, indisputed" and based on clear legal foundations to the effect that even the US Secretary of State had had to acknowledge to that and justify the US' "illogical" policy in a layman suspicion.
In the interview, Rice said Washington wants all countries without nuclear weapons to give up their rights under the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich or reprocess uranium for peaceful purposes, arguing that such activity poses too great a risk for proliferation.
