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Iran's leader says US nuke accusations wrong

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-21 07:34

TEHRAN, Iran: Iran's supreme leader said Sunday that US officials know they are wrongly accusing Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks in front of pictures of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, left, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, before Friday prayers at the Tehran University campus in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. Ahmadinejad lashed out at Israel and the West saying Friday the Holocaust was a lie and a pretext for occupying Palestinian lands. [Agencies]

In Iran's first official reaction to the US decision to scrap a European missile intercept system to defend against threats from Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed President Barack Obama's administration is following the same policies as its predecessor.

"The US officials who talk about Iranian missiles and their danger while saying Iran intends to build a nuclear bomb, they know these words are wrong," Khamenei said in remarks broadcast on state-run radio. "Despite its apparent friendly messages and words" the Obama administration is pursuing the same policy of Iran-phobia, he said.

The US administration has invited Iran to start a dialogue on its nuclear program and gave a vague September deadline for Tehran to take up the offer. The US and five other world powers accepted an offer from Iran earlier this month to hold "comprehensive, all-encompassing and constructive" talks on a range of security issues, including global nuclear disarmament.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana will meet Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili on Oct. 1 for talks on Iran's nuclear program. Iran has long maintained the program is purely for peaceful purposes and Khamenei reiterated that Iran considers the production and use of nuclear arms forbidden by the country's Muslim beliefs.

Related readings:  Clinton warns more isolation on Iran  Iran's hardliners attack opposition head  Iran offers new cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog  US insists on discussing nuclear issue with Iran

The Obama administration announced earlier this month it was scrapping a Bush-era plan for a missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic. Former President George W. Bush contended the system was needed to shoot down any Iranian missile if Tehran ever developed one with adequate range to threaten the United States or Europe.

US officials have said the decision was based largely on a new US intelligence assessment that Iran's effort to build a nuclear-capable long-range missile would take three years to five years longer than originally thought. The scrapped plan will be replaced by a new one initially geared more to the threat of short- and medium-range missiles from Iran.