Iran demands US troop withdrawal
Ahmadinejad says US troops in the region and Afghanistan are stoking more insecurity.
Israel will ‘collapse’
The president also said that Israel, the “main instigator of conflict” in the Middle East, was on its way to collapse and that regional powers wanted it uprooted.
| in depth | |||||||||||||||
|
“This is the will of the regional nations that after 60 odd years, the root of this corrupt microbe and the main reason for insecurity in the region be pulled out,” Ahmadinejad said.
He said that except the “Zionist regime (Israel),” Iran considered all other countries as “friend and brother” with whom the Islamic state wanted peaceful co-existence.
On the day that Iran was exhibiting its latest military hardware, Ahmadinejad vowed that the country would use all its military potential in case of any armed aggression.
Ahmadinejad’s comments came a day after he called for the formation of a new international body to oversee nuclear disarmament during a two-day summit on civilian nuclear energy in Tehran.
Nuclear summit
The summit, which is continuing on Sunday, is seen as a counterpoint to a major conference in Washington earlier this week, in which Barack Obama, the US president, outlined his nuclear strategy.
Iran criticised the 47-nation nuclear security summit on the grounds that the US holds one of the world’s largest stocks of nuclear weapons.
Iran was not invited to the conference as the US fears its nuclear programme could be a cover for the production of atomic weapons.
Tehran says it is entitled to continue work on its controversial uranium enrichment programme. It strongly denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying its atomic programme is for meeting civilian energy needs.