Iran will defend its controversial nuclear programme to its "last drop of blood" and refuse to suspend uranium enrichment as demanded by the UN Security Council, a senior cleric said Friday.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, meanwhile, arrived in Iran to visit the Islamic republic's uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and other sites. The IAEA also announced that the nuclear watchdog's chief Mohamed ElBaradei was due to visit Iran next week.
"We want our rights and nothing more, and we will resist until our last drop of blood," Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khatami said in a Friday prayer sermon broadcast on state radio. "They want to create a crisis. The Security Council, which ought to be an instrument of justice, wants to create insecurity and injustice," the ultra-conservative cleric charged.
"They have set a one-month deadline for us to suspend our research on enrichment. They can set a one-month delay, one for a year or whatever they want. We will not renounce our rights."
A non-binding statement approved unanimously by the world body on March 29 gave the Islamic republic 30 days to abandon the sensitive nuclear work, but without issuing a threat of sanctions.
Meanwhile, Khatami said the past week of Iranian military manoeuvres in the strategic Gulf, in which missiles were tested, aimed to show that "if enemies try to attack Islamic Iran, they will receive a severe smacking."
The IAEA visit starting Friday was planned months ago and is not linked to the Security Council statement of late March, Aliasghar Soltanieh, Iran's representative to the IAEA said, quoted by the semi-official news agency Mehr.
"The inspections to be carried out in the coming days are routine inspections within the framework of the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty and not linked to the statement," he said.
The IAEA inspectors were due to inspect different nuclear sites, including the Natanz facility, Soltanieh said earlier in the week.
Washington believes the Natanz site, with its underground uranium enrichment facility, is one of the main components in Tehran's alleged drive to build a nuclear bomb. In other developments, a diplomat with the IAEA said ElBaradei was set to visit Tehran on an undisclosed date next week.
ElBaradei will "meet with senior officials for discussions related to outstanding safeguard verification issues and other confidence building measures requested by the IAEA board of governors," the diplomat said.
The IAEA chief said Thursday he hoped for "co-operation and transparency" from Tehran over its nuclear power stand-off.
"We have seen issues in Iran that we need to understand before we can say that we are satisfied that all activities in Iran are exclusively for peaceful purposes," ElBaradei told a Madrid news conference.
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