Tehran summit promotes nuke-free world

Tehran says its upcoming denuclearization conference aims to send the message that nuclear weapons have no place in the world — particularly in the Middle East.

"We would continue to send this very strong message from the capital of Iran, Tehran, the center of the Middle East, that nuclear weapons do not have a place at all in this very sensitive part of the world," Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, Iran's deputy foreign minister, told Press TV ahead of the international conference on nuclear disarmament scheduled for April 17th and 18th.

Officials from more than 60 countries as well as representatives from various international and non-governmental entities have been invited to the two-day conference dubbed "Nuclear energy for all, Nuclear weapons for none.”

Akhoundzadeh, who is the secretary general of the summit, also said that the conference did not mean to overshadow the nuclear summit held earlier in the US.

"This is a process, this is not a project. Some may think that this is to overshadow what's going on in Washington but we don't look at it that way," he reiterated.

Iran's ambassador to the Netherlands, Kazem Gharibabadi, said Tuesday that the conference seeks "practical" methods to oblige nuclear-armed countries to dismantle their nuclear warheads.

"Iran's main intention for holding this conference is that nuclear-armed countries take practical steps [towards disarmament]," he said in an interview with ANP, the Netherlands' national news agency.

He added that although the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into effect 40 years ago to curb the spread of nuclear weapons across the globe, the international community was seriously concerned about the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons, which have yet to be dismantled.

Gharibabadi added that Tehran's forum would also discuss issues such as globalization of the NPT, the legal consequences of threatening to use or using nuclear weapons, as well as the need to end discrimination in the implementation of nuclear disarmament treaties.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=123344§ionid=351020104.