You're reading: Iran president defends right to nuclear energy

RIO DE JANEIRO — Iran's president defended his nation's right to develop nuclear energy during a visit to Brazil.

President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s Thursday press conference came two days after nuclear
talks with world powers in Moscow ended without progress. He spoke to
journalists on the sidelines of the U.N. conference on sustainable
development being held this week in Rio de Janeiro.

In order to
tackle the social and economic inequalities and the injustice currently
undermining human dignity world-wide, there is a great need for a “new
world order,” he said through a Portuguese-speaking translator.

“This
order would be based on compassion and justice, and in it, all humanity
would be respected,” he said, pointing out that in the world today, a
small minority has the power to make decisions, without consideration
for the needs of the majority.

A sign of the injustice in the current world order, he said, is the nuclear proliferation question.

“The
countries that have nuclear arms today, and that at certain moments
used those arms, today through threats are telling other countries they
cannot have these weapons,” he said. “We believe that nuclear energy,
along with other forms of energy, should be accessible to all nations
and is the right of all nations. But nowadays, it is monopolized by a
few.”

In the talks between Tehran and six world powers that ended
Tuesday, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany
argued that Iran should stop enriching uranium to the point where it is
steps away from being usable in nuclear
warheads. Iranian leaders during the talks said the country is not
pursuing nuclear weapons, and that the uranium is only meant for medical
uses and to make reactor fuel.