UNITED NATIONS: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said that Tehran is ready for talks on its nuclear energy program with complete transparency, and urged the US President Barack Obama to reject the short-sighted interest of warmongering pressure groups if he wants to manage differences with Iran.
In his address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Rouhani hoped that both Iran and the United States can arrive at a framework to manage their differences if their interactions are governed by equal footing‚ mutual respect and the recognized principles of international law.
Rouhani said that Iran poses no threat to the world but it is a harbinger of peace and security in a region engulfed in chaos.
“Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions,” he said, adding that the Iranian nuclear energy program has always been a peaceful one.
The Iranian president slammed sanctions imposed against Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program as “violent” saying, “The negative impact is not nearly limited to the intended victims of sanctions.”
It is “an illusion, and extremely unrealistic, to presume that the peaceful nature of the nuclear program of Iran could be ensured through impeding the program via illegitimate pressures,” Rouhani added.
On the other hand, in an interview with CNN the Iranian President accepted that the Holocaust occurred and said that the Nazis committed a “reprehensible” crime against the Jewish people.
“I am not a historian and when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust it is the historians that should reflect,” Rouhani said.
“But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis created towards the Jews, is reprehensible and condemnable,” he added.
