A leaked memo appearing to show Tehran's efforts to design an atomic bomb trigger was forged by the United States, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a US news programme. Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC News about a report in London's Times newspaper last week on what it said was a confidential Iranian technical document describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the part of a warhead that sets off an explosion.
"They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government," he told the US network in an interview broadcast on Monday. Reports that Iran is working on a bomb trigger are "fundamentally not true", Ahmadinejad said. On December 14, The Times published what it said was the Farsi-language document, with an English translation, entitled "Outlook for Special Neutron-Related Activities Over the Next Four Years".
The document described steps to develop and test parts for a neutron initiator, a device that floods the core of highly enriched uranium with subatomic particles to set off the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion. Iran, the world's No 5 oil exporter, says its uranium enrichment programme is aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more gas and oil. Because of its record of nuclear secrecy, the West believes Iran wants to make atomic bombs.
In a televised speech in southern Iran on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad said the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Israel should be dismantled. The Jewish state is assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic weapons. Dismissing Western allegations about Iran's nuclear ambitions, Ahmadinejad said: "You should know that if we had any intention of building a bomb, we would have had enough guts and courage to announce that without any fear from you."