Tehran: Iran will not back down from its nuclear ambitions despite new Western sanctions announced this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday in a speech broadcast on state television.
"The Iranian nation will not back down an iota, and will not allow the slightest move to encroach on the nation`s rights," he told a crowd in the town of Pakdasht, east of Tehran.
Referring to the United States, Britain and Canada, which on Monday unveiled the sanctions against Iran`s financial sector, he said: "I advise them to cease these tantrums, and stop thinking that baring their claws and fangs will stop the Iranian nation."
Ahmadinejad reiterated that, contrary to Western claims Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, "we do not need an atomic bomb."
"They ask us to prove that we do not have an atomic bomb... How can we prove something that does not exist? It is as if someone asks another person to prove that he is healthy... Sickness is proveable," he said.
Bureau Report
