From The Australian:
TEHRAN: Iran has signalled a confrontation with the West by rejecting a European Union offer to help it to build a nuclear energy program in return for scrapping operations that could lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
In a terse address to parliament, Iran’s conservative new President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that such constraints would constitute a breach of his country’s rights.
“We respect international norms but we will not agree to outside diktats that are illegal and violate the rights of Iran,” he said. “Some governments have been trying to deprive our nation of its inalienable rights and that produces resistance in our people … I don’t know why some countries cannot understand that the Iranian people will not succumb to force.”
…certain inalienable rights and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of nuclear weapons? No, Mr. Ahmadinejad, we just don’t think of that last one as a legitimate “right.”
Britain, France and Germany, which have been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear ambitions for two years, have called an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency for tomorrow…
The three EU countries had hoped to convince Tehran to end a nuclear-enrichment program that could be used to make weapons-grade uranium.
The proposal included an offer to help Iran build light water reactors for a civilian energy program and supply them with fuel. In return, Iran would have to abandon plans to enrich its own uranium. But the proposal was dismissed.
Humm, so the British, German and French taxpayers will supply Iran (that sits on a lake of oil) with fuel, and yet that still was not enough. How many more “rights” will they discover, I wonder?