Syed Mohammad Ali HosseiniIranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman
* 'Israel is a threat in the region'
* 'Arab states willing to engage in confidence building measures with Iran'
Iran believes that the growing bilateral ties between India and Israel
* 'Iran will not surrender its legitimate right to enrich uranium on its own territory'
* 'Iran willing to share its experience in the field of civil nuclear energy with the Arab states'
New Delhi
14 February 2008
will do no good to the cause of Palestine. According to Iran, it does not behove of India to
engage a people who are guilty of committing crimes in the past.
"To promote relations with Zionist regime does not support the Palestinian rights ... it
does not help the Palestinian people to get their full rights," Iranian Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Syed Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in an interview to this newspaper.
Mr Hosseini said that Israel has hundreds of atomic bombs and it is a threat in the
region, before hastening to add that it is the sovereign right of India to decide how to
conduct diplomatic relations with the countries of the world.
"It is a decision for India to make relations with any other party and we (Iran) as an
independent country we make our decisions and we choose our policy concerning
different countries according to our values and our interests," he explained.
Mr Hosseini iterated that Iran will not surrender its legitimate right to enrich uranium on
its own territory. "It is a legal right of Iranians to have enrichment of uranium inside
Iran," he said, adding that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) confers this right on
Iran.
He said that Iran is not against a proposal for an international enrichment centre. "We
are not against that but we say without any precondition that Iran should not have
enrichment right inside Iranian territory," he explained.
The Iranian diplomat said that Iran will be willing to share its experience in the field of
civil nuclear energy with the Arab states in the region. "We express our readiness also
to present our improvement in nuclear field to neighbouring countries and [share our]
experience to help them," he said.
Mr Hosseini criticised United States President George Bush for fanning "Iranophobia"
and making "baseless accusations" against Iran during his eight-day (January 9 to 16)
tour of West Asia.
He suggested that the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC's) invitation to Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend their summit at Qatar in December 2007 and Egypt's
overtures towards Iran show that the Arab states are willing to engage in "confidence
building" measures with Iran.
The GCC comprises Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait
and Oman. All the six GCC countries are known US allies but they engaged with Iran
despite the American sabre-rattling.
"It (GCC-Iran rapprochement) shows that the US policy of dividing Iran and the Arab
states is not fruitful," Mr Hosseini said. "Arab states expressed willingness to promote
relations with Iran. They said it is a necessity for the region."
"It shows that relations between Iran and Arab states in our region is expanding and we
are in the way to solve all problems and confidence building policy is taking place by
both sides and we are witnessing the results of this cooperation," he added.
Mr Hosseini asserted that Iran has and will continue to help the "deprived" people
wherever they are, irrespective of whether they are of Shia or Sunni persuasion. "We
defend the rights of deprived regardless of religion or sect. Palestine is not a Shia-Sunni
issue. We defended them in Afghanistan and Iraq too," he said, and recalled that there
was no sectarian strife prior to the occupation of Iraq by the US forces.
Mr Hosseini led an Iranian delegation comprising media persons to India ahead of a
possible visit to Tehran by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later this year. A meeting of
the India-Iran Joint Commission is likely to take place in a few months.
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