China, Russia urge Iran nuclear rights

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao have reiterated support for Iran’s civilian nuclear program, pointing to the Islamic Republic’s right to nuclear energy.

In a joint statement issued in the Russian capital Moscow on Thursday, Medvedev and the visiting Chinese president threw their weight behind Iran with regards to its nuclear issue, Reuters reported.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has once again expressed his readiness for talks with global powers over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program.

“The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran has once again announced Iran’s readiness to [resolve] our country’s nuclear issue through negotiations with the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany),” Salehi said.

Salehi was referring to President Ahmadinejad’s remarks made during a trilateral meeting with his Russian and Kazakh counterparts on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Astana.

The Iranian minister also highlighted the Islamic Republic’s close cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the proof of the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.

In a separate meeting with President Ahmadinejad in Astana, the Chinese president had emphasized that Iran’s nuclear rights must be respected and efforts should be made to reach a negotiated settlement on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear activities.

Two rounds of multifaceted talks between Iran and the P5+1 were held in Geneva in December 2010 and in the Turkish city of Istanbul last January.

The IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence confirming US-sponsored allegations that Iran’s nuclear program may be intended towards a nuclear weapons production.

Iran has fiercely denied such Western allegations as entirely without merit, arguing that as a member of the IAEA and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has every right to use nuclear technology for the common uses of electricity generation and medical research.