generalspeaking

Regime: Iran is a “victim of weapons of mass destruction”

Last week, UN Watch revealed that Iran is to head the UN Conference on Disarmament and called on nations to protest. The USA and Canada announced they would bar their ambassadors from attending. Now Iran is on the defensive. Below is a BBC summary of an Iranian news report.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyyed Abbas Araqchi has said that the United States is preventing the advancement of peace and security, accusing the USA of holding “hostage” a UN conference on disarmament with its threats of a boycott, Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported on 16 May.

“With its behaviour, America has in effect taken hostage the conference and is preventing it from working towards the advancement of international peace and security,” ISNA quoted Araqchi as commenting on US threats to boycott a UN disarmament conference because Iran would be chairing it.

“America’s behaviour goes against the democratic vote of member countries and the mechanism of international institutions for electing the chair [of a conference], and in other words it goes against the will of global society,” Araqchi added.

Seyyed Abbas Araqchi went on to emphasize that Iran was suited for the chairmanship of the conference, saying that Iran understands the importance of disarmament as it is a “victim of weapons of mass destruction”.



“By using all national and international capacities, the Islamic Republic of Iran, together with other peace-loving nations in the world, has attempted and will attempt to achieve a world without weapons of mass destruction,” he added.

Source: BBC summary of ISNA website, Tehran, in Persian 0537gmt 16 May 13