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Certain claims to be answered at Preliminary NPT Conference - Soltaniyeh

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Vienna, May 1, IRNA
Soltaniyeh-Iran-NPT
Iran's ambassador and permanent envoy at international organizations said here Monday Iran would answer certain baseless claims and questions at Preliminary NPT Conference.

Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh made the comment in an interview with IRNA, reacting to some speakers' criticism against Iran's peaceful nuclear program and asking Tehran to halt its enrichment activities at the NPT Preliminary Conference that began here on Monday morning.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, Soltaniyeh focused on the general atmosphere of the gathering, adding, "Some of those stands are repetitious, at any rate, and those are, as before, the stands made by the United States and echoed by Europe."

Elsewhere in the interview with IRNA in Vienna, he said, "This meeting is aimed at evaluating the efficiency of the NPT, and Iran and the developing countries would voice their criticism against not implementing Article 4, on taking peaceful advantage of the nuclear energy."

Soltaniyeh added, "Meanwhile, on Article 6 of the NPT, based on which the countries that possess nuclear weapons must destroy them, the question is why those countries have still taken no step in that regard."

On general agenda of the conference, he said, "We are not agreed with the general agenda of the conference, and our proposal was to take advantage of the agenda of the year 2005, over which all members were totally agreed."

He added, "In present agenda, there are discussions of effectiveness of the NPT in various fields, and the most important point from our point of the view is the discussions on abiding, or not abiding by the NPT articles, which we believe contain pre-judgments."

The Preliminary NPT Conference that is commissioned to define the axes of the Conference to Revise the NPT, scheduled for the year 2010, began its work at Vienna's International Conferences Center on Monday morning and would last for two weeks.

Representatives from 188 countries attend the meeting.

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