Iran slams US double standard policy; US seeks to change nuclear treaty

Iran on Sunday strongly condemned the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statements on Iran. "Rice's statements indicate that the US adopts a double standard policy in dealing with the world countries, it seeks to violate international laws and conventions through following the unilateral policy," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.

He defended his country's right to possess a nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, adding the US has no right to interfere in the economic and developmental processes of other countries.

Asefi said Sunday that the "US should stop fanning distrust, spreading suspision and continuing to raise excuses against peaceful use of nuclear energy ... the US has no right and can not condition countries' economic progress and development on its discriminatory stances and interpretations," the official news agency IRNA reported.

IRNA quoted him saying "the claims of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an interview with the US daily Los Angeles Times should be interpreted as Washington's acknowledgment to attempts to discredit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). He added that the claims show clearly that the US administration has founded its policy on institutionalization of discrimination and double-standards worldwide and is arrogantly and unilaterally trying to undermine international institutions and conventions."

He said Iran's right for use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is "absolute, indisputed" and based on clear legal foundations ad that even the US Secretary of State "had had to

acknowledge to that and justify the US 'illogical' policy in a layman suspicion," and that "the US wants all countries without nuclear weapons to give up their rights under the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich or reprocess uranium for peaceful purposes, arguing that such activity poses too great a risk for proliferation," IRNA reported.