China: Dialogue, Cooperation Only Way to Resolve Iran's N. Issue

On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei was responding to a question about the UN nuclear chief's address to the UN General Assembly about the cooperation between the agency and Iran, Xinhua reported.

Hong said, "China has always considered that dialogue and cooperation is the only right way to properly resolve the Iranian nuclear issue."

Hong said the top priority is that the five permanent members and Germany stick to talks and the IAEA enhance cooperation with Iran to achieve progress at an early date.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.

Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA's questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.

A 2008 report of the IAEA by the then Director-General, Mohamed ElBaradei, thanked Iran's honest cooperation in removing ambiguities about its past activities and confirmed that Iran has answered all the six outstanding questions of the world body about the nuclear material and activities that it had had in the past.
isna/281