Ahmadinejad: Annapolis conference will hurt Palestinians
Iran asserts US-led peace summit will only serve Israeli interests, seeks to allay 'World's' fears regarding its nuclear program
The Annapolis peace conference is doomed for failure and will only harm Palestinian interests, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday according to the IRNA news agency.
"Apart from hurting the Palestinians, this conference will accomplish nothing," Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem. The Iranian president added that "the summit's initiators want to establish relations between the Arab countries and the Zionist regime."
The conference, set to take place on November 27th in Maryland, hopes to kick-start long-dead negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and boasts the participation of high-ranking representatives from over 40 nations.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Iran released a letter addressed to the world's top diplomats to argue its case in the deepening nuclear row with the West.
"I would like to emphasize that Iran's nuclear program is completely peaceful," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki wrote in the letter, "this program is not a threat against any country."
The agency said the letter was sent to "the world's foreign ministers" but did not specify whether it went to the United States and Iran's other western foes.
Tehran says it only aims to generate electricity so that, as the world's fourth-largest crude producer, it can export more oil and gas.
Mottaki said Iran had shown goodwill "even beyond its legal commitments" to remove ambiguities about its atomic activities, working with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"All Iran's nuclear activities ... Are based on the agency's charter and the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), under the agency's full and continuous supervision," he wrote.
The IAEA said in a report last week that Iran had made important strides towards clarifying past nuclear work, but admitted it was still enriching uranium on an industrial level, in defiance of the UN Security Council.
Iran said the report showed it had been telling the truth about its atomic plans.
But US Officials said it showed Tehran still defying the international community and that Washington would proceed with allies to draft broader United Nations sanctions against it.
Iran has already defied two rounds of sanctions since December.
Reuters contributed to this report
