Posted by
Team Turk on Thursday, October 05, 2006 11:59:53 AM
From United Press International:
Iran's president said Wednesday sanctions would not stop his country from enriching uranium.
He also declared April 9 "Nuclear Technology Day."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pledge followed comments by the European Union's foreign policy chief Wednesday that the matter would likely be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions because talks had all but reached a dead end, The New York Times reported.
A coalition of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China has been working since early June to persuade Iran to suspend its work on uranium enrichment as a precondition to discussing a package of incentives for Iran to abandon its nuclear program entirely.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and does not violate international law. The United States contends this is a cover for the development of nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad said he chose April 9 as Nuclear Technology Day because that is the day when Iranian scientists "succeeded in completing nuclear fuel circle and Iran joined the handful of countries which have access to this technology," the official IRNA news agency said.