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New York - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations General Assembly that the issue of his country's nuclear programme was "closed" since Tehran was co-operating fully with the UN atomic watchdog and its uranium enrichment activities were legal.
Despite military threats and "illegal" sanctions, "Iran has moved forward step by step and now our country is recognised as one with the capacity for industrial-scale fuel cycle production for peaceful purposes," he declared.
The protests in Myanmar temporarily pushed concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions and the fight against climate change down the agenda on the first day of the UN debate, as well as conflicts in Darfur, Iraq and the Middle East.
Separately, the UN Security Council gave the green light for a European Union-led peacekeeping force to protect refugees and displaced persons in Chad and the Central African Republic from spillover violence from the Sudanese province of Darfur.
United States President George W. Bush focused on human rights and promoting democracy, including in Iran, without mentioning the Iranian nuclear programme. But a White House spokeswoman said Washington would continue to press for tougher UN sanctions on Tehran.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy reminded the assembly of the high stakes in the standoff, saying that to allow the Islamic Republic to acquire nuclear weapons could destabilise the world.
"There will be no peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of nuclear arms proliferation ... Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war," Sarkozy said in his address.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at an awards ceremony in New York that it was not up to the world to prove Tehran sought nuclear weapons, "rather it is up to Iran to prove that it does not want to build an atomic bomb".
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega alone delivered an anti-capitalist tirade against US world hegemony.
US leaders continued to dictate what was right or wrong "as if they were God," he declared, while poor countries were still afflicted by "oppression and violence and terror."
- Reuters
