Iran conf seeks world without nukes

Tehran’s international conference on nuclear disarmament seeks to find ways for the global implementation of disarmament treaties, an Iranian envoy says.

Iran is preparing to hold an international conference on nuclear disarmament on April 17th and 18th.

Apart from officials and representatives from more than 60 countries, representatives and authorities from various international and non-governmental entities have been invited to the two-day conference dubbed “Nuclear energy for all, Nuclear weapons for none.”

The conference comes as the international community is deeply disturbed by thousands of nuclear warheads in Western countries including the United States as well as Israel’s stockpile of 200 nuclear warheads.

“The Tehran conference seeks to help end discrimination in the implementation of nuclear disarmament treaties and to reach a comprehensive international treaty for real nuclear disarmament in the world,” Iranian ambassador to Denmark Morteza Damanpak Jami told reporters on Friday.

One day after Iran announced that it would hold the conference, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley cast doubt on Iran’s interest in global denuclearization.

He said that Iran had better take actions to prove that its nuclear program was peaceful if it was earnest in its call for nuclear disarmament.

In response, the envoy said that Iran, a signatory to Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), strongly opposes the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Iran “does not consider legitimate the possession of nuclear weapons and other [forms of] weapons of mass destruction by any country,” he said, adding that Tehran believed in a world free of such weapons.

The US, the first country in the world to develop nuclear weapons and the only one to have used them against another nation, accuses Iran of working toward a military nuclear program, an allegation, which Tehran categorically rejects.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the body responsible for verifying countries’ nuclear programs, has, to date, found no evidence on diversion of Iran’s nuclear work toward any military purposes.