Iran vows to win nuclear tussle with West

President Ahmadinejad

A defiant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that Tehran was close to its target of producing nuclear energy and launched a new tirade against Israel as world powers seek to impose new sanctions on Iran.
"The nuclear issue was the most important challenge since the (1979 Islamic) revolution but with the help of God and your resistance, it is ending in favour of the Iranian nation," Ahmadinejad told cheering crowds.
"We are moving towards the summit on the nuclear path," he said.
"Iranians... will not back down one iota in defence of their rights," he said in a speech in Bushehr, the site of Iran's first nuclear power plant which Tehran said on Wednesday is to be commissioned in October.
Iran has been slapped with two sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment and a third package is currently being considered by the Security Council.
The West fears that Iran is using its nuclear drive to try to build atomic weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied, saying it is aimed at generating electricity.
Uranium enrichment is a process which makes nuclear fuel but can also be diverted to produce the fissile core of atomic bombs.
The Security Council on Monday held informal talks on a third sanctions resolution, a draft of which was agreed by the five veto-wielding permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and United States -- plus Germany.
The proposed new measures include an outright travel ban by officials involved in Tehran's nuclear and missile programmes and inspections of shipments to and from Iran if there are suspicions of prohibited goods.
Ahmadinejad also renewed his verbal attack on arch-foe Israel, saying its days are numbered and predicting that the "filthy Zionist entity" will fall sooner or later.
Widely considered to be the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel accuses the Islamic republic of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of its nuclear programme.
"I advise you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line," Ahmadinejad told world powers of the Jewish state which Tehran does not recognise.
"It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall," he predicted. "The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers' days are numbered."
Israel has called for tougher sanctions on Tehran and its Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said all options are on the table to prevent "an Iranian bomb."
Diplomats in New York, meanwhile, said approval of the sanctions package, presented to the council's 10 non-permanent members on Friday, was likely to take several weeks.
Iran insists the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose board of governors meets in March, will confirm that its nuclear activities have not deviated toward weapons development.
Despite a four-year probe into Tehran's atomic drive, the UN nuclear watchdog has so far been unable to certify whether it is peaceful.
But in January 13, the IAEA announced that Iran had agreed to clear up remaining questions on its nuclear programme -- including any military activity -- by mid-February.