Algeria reiterates support for Iran's nuclear rights

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, in a meeting with Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said that Iran as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is entitled to advance its civilian nuclear program. The Algerian prime minister Monday stressed that peaceful use of nuclear energy is among the Iranian nation's legitimate rights. Boroujerdi, for his part, lauded Algeria’s principled stances towards Iran and the Muslim world. A senior Iranian parliamentary delegation headed by Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi Saturday left Tehran for Algiers for an official visit to the Muslim country. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.