Iranians hurl eggs, tomatoes at British embassy

Crowds of people hurled eggs and tomatoes at the British embassy in Tehran on Thursday after the MI6 spy chief said espionage was key to curbing Iran`s nuclear drive, state news agency IRNA reported.

Tehran: Crowds of people hurled eggs and
tomatoes at the British embassy in Tehran on Thursday after the MI6
spy chief said espionage was key to curbing Iran`s nuclear
drive, state news agency IRNA reported.

IRNA said about 100 Iranians gathered outside Britain`s
mission and chanted "Death to America!" and "Death to
Britain!" as they threw the projectiles at the building.
They were protesting against remarks made on Friday by
John Sawers, the head of Britain`s foreign intelligence
service MI6, that espionage was responsible for Iran`s
admission last year of a second enrichment plant, which
in turn led to tougher diplomatic pressure.

"Stopping nuclear proliferation cannot be addressed
purely by conventional diplomacy. We need intelligence-led
operations to make it more difficult for countries like Iran
to develop nuclear weapons," Sawers said.

The UN Security Council has imposed four sets of
sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities, which the
West fears mask a weapons drive, a charge the Islamic republic
vehemently denies.

In September 2009, Iran notified the UN nuclear watchdog
it was building a second uranium enrichment plant near the
central holy city of Qom.
World powers are particularly concerned about Iran`s
uranium enrichment programme, as the refined material can be
used to make the fissile core of an atom bomb, as well as
power a nuclear reactor.

In a separate mass protest, thousands of Iranians
demonstrated today outside the closed US embassy in central
Tehran to mark the 31st anniversary of the capturing of the
mission by radical Islamist students in 1979.

PTI

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