Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday promised to pursue nuclear technology despite Western "bullying," as Russia apparently scuppered a push for new sanctions against Tehran.
Iran "will resist the bullying and has defended and will continue to defend its rights," Ahmadinejad said in a defiant speech to the UN General Assembly.
In a clear reference to the United States and its allies, he said: "They oppose other nations’ progress and tend to monopolize technologies and to use those monopolies in order to impose their will on other nations."
He also lashed out at Israel, saying, "the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."
Despite three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions, Iran continues to defy calls by the United States and its Western allies to halt uranium enrichment — a process the West and Israel fear is being used to make an atomic bomb.
Iran says it aims only for peaceful civilian nuclear energy.
However, with the UN Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — divided, Ahmadinejad was confident he was unlikely to face tougher action soon.
"We do not believe that the US policy perspective, looking at the rest of the world as a field of confrontation, will give good results," he told newspaper.
In the latest evidence of splits among world powers, Russia’s foreign ministry rejected a US-led call for a new meeting on Iran.
"We do not see any fire that requires us to toss everything aside and meet to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme in the middle of a packed week at the United Nations General Assembly," the ministry said in a statement.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had planned to meet on the sidelines of the UN assembly with colleagues from Britain, Russia, France, China and Germany — the "P5+1" group.
The United States wants to impose new sanctions against Iran, but Russia and China are resisting the move.
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