Salehi underlines political nature of Iran's N. issue

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the world powers have sought to make a ballyhoo about his country's nuclear dossier with political drives, adding that if Tehran's nuclear issue had been entangled with technical or legal problems, Iranian officials would have resolved the issue so far.Speaking to reporters during a joint news conference with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian in Yerevan, Salehi, who formerly headed Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said he is informed of all nuclear activities in the Islamic Republic. "I'm comprehensively informed about all the details of Iran's nuclear affairs, and I'm claiming that Iran's nuclear issue is a political deal, if it were a technical or legal problem, we would settle it on mutual understanding mediated by IAEA," Salehi said. "We've never behaved like that in the international affairs," he said, reiterating Iran's peaceful nuclear activities had never tilted towards military drives. He further noted that Tehran's nuclear stances, opinions and positions are clear, strong and united. He quoted Iranian President and Minister of Defense as stating that their policy and procedures don't target nuclear weapon as a preventive weapon. "If we wished to produce a nuclear weapon, we would declare it and we would do it, and our experience displays that nuclear weapon isn't a preventive thing for countries like ours," said the Iranian diplomat. Iran says its nuclear program is a peaceful drive to produce electricity so that the world's fourth-largest crude exporter can sell more of its oil and gas abroad. Tehran also stresses that the country is pursuing a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. The US and its western allies allege that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program while they have never presented corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations against the Islamic Republic. Iran is under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment, saying the demand is politically tainted and illogical. Iran has so far ruled out halting or limiting its nuclear work in exchange for trade and other incentives, saying that renouncing its rights under the NPT would encourage the world powers to put further pressure on the country and would not lead to a change in the West's hardline stance on Tehran. Iran has also insisted that it would continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the Southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the Southern port city of Bushehr. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA's questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.