AFP, United Nations, May 3, 2010 – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to isolate Iran at UN nuclear talks here Monday when she dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad’s anti-US charges as ’wild accusations.’
At the opening of the three-week long nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, Clinton put Iran among a ’few outliers’ that have flouted international rules designed to check the spread of atomic weapons.
North Korea is another outlier, the chief US diplomat said in a speech.
She urged deleGates from around 150 NPT signatories to avoid past pitfalls in which participants fracture into different blocs like those with nuclear weapons against those without and western nations against non-aligned.
’This time must be different,’ Clinton said, turning her fire on Iran.
’This morning, Iran’s president offered the same tired, false, and sometimes wild accusations against the United States and other parties at this conference,’ she said.
In an earlier speech, Ahamdinejad triggered a walkout by US and other deleGates when he blasted the United States for threatening to use atomic weapons.
Washington has launched various initiatives to give weight to President Barack Obama’s vow to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.
In a new US nuclear policy unveiled last month, Obama restricted the use of atomic weapons against non-nuclear states that comply with the NPT.
The stand left North Korea and Iran out in the cold.
Clinton said it is ’not surprising’ that the Iranian leader would try to divert attention from Iran’s non-compliance with its NPT obligations.
’As you all heard this morning, Iran will do whatever it can to divert attention away from its own record and to attempt to evade accountability,’ Clinton said.
For example, she charged that Ahamdinejad had falsely claimed that Iran was willing to exchange nuclear fuel as part of an October 2009 confidence-building offer from the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
’Iran is the only country represented in this hall that the IAEA board of governors has found to be currently in non-compliance with its nuclear safeguards obligations,’ she said.
’It has defied the UN Security Council and the IAEA and placed the future of the non-proliferation regime in jeopardy. And that is why it is facing increasing isolation and pressure from the international community,’ she said.
’Iran will not succeed in its efforts to divert and divide,’ she said.
She hammered home the same remarks in a post-speech news conference.
’It appears that Iran’s president came here today with no intention of improving the NPT,’ she said.
’He came to distract attention from his own government’s failure to live up to its international obligations, to evade accountability for defying the international community and to undermine our shared commitment to strengthening the treaty,’ she said.
’But he will not succeed.’
Clinton then alluded to the months-long painstaking US-led drive to impose tougher UN sanctions against Iran that has met resistance from some Security Council members such as Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon.
’Potential violators must know that they will pay a high price for breaking the rules,’ she told deleGates attending the review conference of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, signed by 189 countries.