Iran will never halt its nuclear program:Iranian MPs

TEHRAN,Feb.25(MNA) – Two hundred and fifty-two Iranian lawmakers issued a statement on Sunday saying Iran will never halt its peaceful nuclear program. The statement was issued just ahead of a new round of nuclear talks between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) which is scheduled to be held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26. The six major powers want Iran to halt 20 percent enrichment and shut down the Fordo underground plant where this takes place. Iran wants them to recognize its right to refine uranium for peaceful purposes and to ease economic sanctions against the country. The MPs wrote that the United States had used all methods of psychological warfare and various sanctions and had been behind illegal UN sanctions resolutions against Iran over the past 34 years and had received the Iranian nation’s response. “So the continuation of this approach is flogging a dead horse, and we, as representatives of the great Iranian nation, suggest the Unites States and its Western allies accept today’s realities of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear (program) and change the policy of confrontation to interaction, and they should be aware that Iran’s nuclear (program) within the framework of peaceful purposes will never come to a halt,” they stated. The parliamentarians also called on Russia and China to defend the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), including the member states’ right to access nuclear technology meant for peaceful purposes, and not to support illogical demands of the United States. Elsewhere in the statement, the MPs urged Iran’s nuclear negotiators to make every effort to defend the country’s rights within the framework of the NPT and the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.