Rooyesh

Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities would be meaningless because the country has a legal right to pursue the technology, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Tehran has defied U.N. resolutions calling on it to suspend uranium enrichment, and on Sunday Ahmadinejad rejected the idea of holding talks on the issue.

“It is meaningless to hold talks over Iran’s obvious and legal right to nuclear technology,” the news agency ISNA quoted him as saying.

The United States severed relations with Tehran’s after its 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the U.S.-backed Shah.

Washington also accuses Shi’ite Muslim Iran of providing funds, arms and training to Iraqi Shi’ite militants and of supporting terrorism. Iran denies the charge, blaming the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 for the bloodshed in Iraq.

On Wednesday, President George W. Bush said Washington had made it clear to Iran that negotiations were possible if it shut down the program, although last month Bush’s top diplomat Condoleezza Rice said she did not expect any talks soon.

Ahmadinejad said Iran was not seeking dialogue.

“We have never asked for holding talks with America. Talks can be held only if America changes its behavior fundamentally,” he said, according to the agency.

“We should set conditions for talks, not Bush.”

The U.N. Security Council has imposed two series of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and Washington is pushing hard for a third.

Source: Reuters

However, major powers have agreed to hold off until November to await a report by European Union negotiator Javier Solana and to see whether Iran, under a pact with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, explains the scope of its activities.

An estimated 100 students staged a rare demonstration Monday against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him a “dictator” and scuffling with hardline students at Tehran University.

Photogallery of today’s protest

Ahmadinejad, who was giving a speech to a select group at the university to mark the beginning of the academic year, ignored the chants of “death to the dictator” and continued with his speech on the merits of science and the pitfalls of Western-style democracy, witnesses said. The protesters scuffled with hardline students who were chanting “thank you president” while police looked on from outside the university gates. The protesters dispersed after the car carrying Ahmadinejad left the campus.

Students were once the main power base of Iran’s reform movement but have faced intense pressure in recent years from Ahmadinejad’s hardline government, making anti-government protests rare. The president faced a similar outburst during a speech last December when students at Amir Kabir Technical University called Ahmadinejad a dictator and set fire to his picture. Hoping to avoid a similar disturbance Monday, organizers imposed tight security measures, checking the identity papers of all students entering the university and allowing only selected students into the hall. But the protesters were somehow able to gain entrance.

Iran’s reform movement peaked in the late 1990s after former reformist president Mohammad Khatami was elected and his supporters swept parliament. But hardliners who control the judiciary, security forces and powerful unelected bodies in the government stymied attempts to ease social and political restrictions. Numerous pro-reform newspapers were shut down, and since Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005, those that remain have been muted in their criticism fearing closure. At universities, pro-reform students have been marginalized, holding low-level meetings. They hold occasional demonstrations, usually to demand better school facilities or the release of detained colleagues. But pro-government student groups have grown more powerful.

Source: The Associated Press