Iran's nuclear 'enemies' defeated: Ahmadinejad
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday the "enemies" of his country's nuclear programme had been defeated ahead of the release of the latest UN report on the atomic drive.
International attention focused on the report as US President Barack Obama said "time is running out" for Iran to respond to a UN plan aiming to ease international fears that the Islamic Republic is working on a nuclear bomb.
Russia, meanwhile, announced that a controversial nuclear power plant it is building in Iran will not start operations by the end of 2009 as previously announced.
Ahmadinejad said the West would have to come to terms with Iran's nuclear progress, Iran's state broadcaster quoted the president as saying on his website.
"Enemies have politicised the nuclear issue using all of their abilities to try to make the Iranian nation surrender, but they have been defeated," Ahmadinejad said.
Nuclear cooperation with Iran is "beneficial to the Westerners because their opposition to it will make Iran stronger and more advanced," he added insisting that Iran's nuclear rights are "non-negotiable" and the research was being pursued "entirely under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision."
The IAEA sent its new report, having stated several times that Iran is not cooperating with UN Security Council demands, backed by three rounds of sanctions, that it halt uranium enrichment.
The new report will also give details of an October visit to an atomic site at Qom, that Iran had until recently kept secret.
Obama on Sunday won the strongest backing yet from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev over international frustration at Iran's failure to answer an offer to enrich uranium outside of Iran.
"Unfortunately, so far at least, Iran has been unable to say yes" to the proposal, Obama said after talks with Medvedev in Singapore. "We now are running out of time with respect to that approach."
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