Iran vows to pursue nuke plans, slams US and Israel

UNITED NATIONS, Wednesday (Reuters) Iran vowed to press ahead with nuclear activities that could be used to make weapons and accused the United States and Israel of threatening international peace with their own atomic arsenals.

"Iran is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology including (uranium) enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told a conference to review the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

He said it was wrong to limit "access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of nonproliferation."

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters Iran could not have access to dangerous nuclear technology and reiterated that the issue may be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions. "They can't have access to certain kinds of technology that can, that have ... proliferation risk," Rice said.

Iran criticized the United States, which accuses Tehran of using its nuclear program as a front for developing arms, for not scrapping its own arsenal as required by the treaty.

"Unilateral nuclear disarmament measures should be pursued vigorously," Kharrazi said. It was also "abhorrent that ... the dangerous doctrine of the use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states and threats was officially proclaimed by the United States and NATO."

Without naming it, China's chief delegate, Zhang Yan, also criticized the United States for adding "destabilizing factors" to the global security situation.

He said those included "sticking to the Cold War mentality, pursuing unilateralism, advocating pre-emptive strategy, listing other countries as targets of nuclear strike and lowering the threshold of using nuclear weapons, research and developing new types of nuclear weapons".

Rising tensions about Iran as well as North Korea, which has said it has nuclear arms, dominated the opening of a monthlong U.N.-sponsored conference on the NPT, the cornerstone of atomic disarmament pacts.