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Soltanieh: Iran's agenda text acceptance, a big success

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Vienna, May 8, IRNA

Iran-NPT-Soltanieh
Iran's IAEA Ambassador Ali-Asghar Soltanieh aid on Tuesday that acceptance of the NPT agenda is a big success for Iran.

Soltanieh told IRNA on the sidelines of the NPT preparatory meeting that though Iran has been under growing pressure over the past days for opposing the document and for lack of consensus in the meeting, they came to the conclusion, despite wide-scale publicity, that it was a principled stance. All the participants in the meeting came in its support eventually, which marks a big success for the country, he added.

Soltanieh said Tehran had accepted the compromise in a display of good will and flexibility.

He said that fortunately, Iran scored the success for its consultation with different countries, including the NAM members of the IAEA Board of Governors, and the non-governmental organizations.

"Since beginning of the session we have been emphasizing that we would not allow discriminatory implementation of the treaty, rather, its full enforcement because such countries as the US are trying to defy the sixth article of the treaty on nuclear disarmament, while refusing to abide fully by their commitment. We could not stand idle against such defiance. Based on the agenda, we insisted that all points of the treaty should be raised and investigated."

Since the beginning, Iran was the only opponent of the compromise agenda but after lengthy consultations, head of the meeting was forced to acknowledge to some flaws. There were yet some countries like the EU members, Canada and Australia which opposed its amendment, he added.

He went on to say that after much political pressures, aiming to isolate Iran in the meeting, fortunately a bright picture was depicted for the officials so as to make final decision in the present juncture.

He said that South Africa on Friday proposed inclusion of "all provisions" in the agenda, which we deemed it not enough. Finally, we announced today that we would accept the stance only on condition of putting a footnote in the agenda text, he added.

"We announced the stance openly, which was supported by Cuba, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Venezuela and Syria.

Since it was based on reason and logic, nobody challenged it," he maintained. He added, "This showed that insistence on the principled stances would be effective. We, after ratification of the agenda, witnessed extension of congratulations by different delegations, the NAM states and even Europeans," he said.

He concluded, "Our right stance was reflected in the UN non-proliferation conference agenda and the future meetings in 2008-9 should follow the same procedure."