H.E. Mr. Sithole
Honorable Chairperson, Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs

It is an honor and privilege for me to be in the presence of the Esteemed Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs. I would like to express my appreciation to Your Excellency for providing me with this opportunity to raise some facts about the nuclear file of our country. .
Iran is a country with 10000 years of written history and a 3000- year history of civilization. Part of this civilization was crystallized in the Islamic revolution in the country which had its roots in the people's deep interest in Islam which preaches peace and affection among human beings, and their deep empathy with the Holy Prophet of Islam and his noble household.
Honorable Members,
I am sure that you have often read or heard about Iran's nuclear issue in the press and western media. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the inception of Iran's nuclear program. It was in 1957 that the government of the United States signed a series of agreements with the then Iranian authorities on launching of nuclear power reactors and Iran's gaining access to peaceful use of nuclear energy. During the years later on more notes were added to the said agreements, while Canada, France and Germany later on signed agreements with Iran on Nuclear technology and the related issues.. An agreement reached with Germany to construct Bushehr reactor; and at that time none of those countries told us "you have enough oil and gas reserves and therefore you don't need nuclear energy". It was a logical decision taken before the Islamic revolution. Of course after the revolution in 1979 all the said agreements came to a halt. This laid the foundation for Iran's mistrust towards west. Germany left Bushehr and we had to turn to Russians to complete construction of the reactor. Now 28 years have passed since that time and Bushehr reactor has not yet been put into operation. 95 percent of its construction has been finished and is in the phase of injection of fuel. Therefore, after the Islamic Revolution that the US and the west never wanted to find out its cause, we tried to stand on our own feet and we embarked upon enriching uranium and heavy water projects. This field
needed advanced knowledge and sophisticated technology. Iran has become a member of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since signing the treaty in1974; and has been committed to the safeguards of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Therefore it is not right to be said that Iran has had secret activities. There is the possibility that some of the cases might have not been reported due to lack of our experience in this regard, but however, the Agency has not so far announced any breach of law on our part. It has confirmed that Iran has announced all its activities and that so far there has not been any deviation towards military purposes. In 2003 there has been much hue and cry by certain countries that Iran intended to produce nuclear weapon and that they were concerned about Iran's intentions. Since we were fully ready to cooperate with the Agency, they asked us to suspend our activities and not to expand them; and we acted accordingly. They asked us to sign the Additional Protocol and implement it, which we acted accordingly and implemented it voluntarily; while it had not yet been approved by the Islamic Consultative Assembly ( Majlis, or Iranian
parliament). Then they demanded us to respond to more questions, which we did. We suspended our activities for two and a half years and promoted our cooperation with the Agency. We allowed 2400 days of inspection of our sites to the IAEA inspectors. Then we opened our military sites as demanded by them, which was indeed very unpleasant for our military commanders. They inspected the said sites for 27 times without finding anything abnormal and announced that the Agency is not in a condition to declare Iran's unannounced cases. You know that inspection process is a long one. In the case of Japan for instance, it took 40 years before it was announced that they had no unannounced cases and that country was awarded the certificate for its work. We didn't leave any of their questions unanswered. In March 2004 we offered our timetable. It took five months for them to consider it and then only to say that it was not acceptable, and that they would offer their
package. In August 2005 the same process was repeated. In this date they offered their first package of incentives and demanded us to desist from our right in exchange for unimportant a1.1d in some cases insulting pledges, like better access to internet. We promptly rejected that package, and came to realize this fact that we could not fulfill our nuclear rights through negotiation with the Europe. We are committed to NPT, 'and accordingly we enjoy certain rights. They embarked upon issuing resolution against us and said that we should suspend enrichment process as a prerequisite for negotiation. We said we had previously suspended that process for two and half years to no avail. In fact their intention was to deprive us of our rights.

They issued three resolutions, two of which in favor of economic embargo against our country. Of course this approach was not strange to us because in 1950s during the campaign for nationalization of Iran's oil industry, the British authorities issued a resolution and said that nationalization of Iran's oil industry constitutes a threat to the world peace and security; but our people and government had determined to continue their campaign. It was for that very reason that a coup d'etat came into being which led to the downfall of the government, and dictatorship returned to the country. It was the price that the nation paid for nationalization of its oil. Considering the conditions prevailing in the world, we have come to the understanding that we have no option but to resist in order to fulfill our rights, and we should pay the prices for this decision.
Honorable Members,
We are confident about the peaceful nature of our actions, yet to make sure the rest of the world about this fact we announce that we are ready to enter into partnership with others in our project. In our view everybody is entitled to express concern about an issue .For this very reason we proposed different ways like formation of a consortium, partnership in uranium enrichment, etc, in a bid to build trust. Unfortunately, 5+ I countries lost two years which was a valuable time for negotiation. Now we have around 3000 centrifuges into which we are injecting UF6. We possess enough amount of yellow cake,
part of which has been purchased from South Africa before the Islamic Revolution, and the rest are being produced inside Iran through making use of three uranium mines in the country. UCF factory in Isfahan converts yellow cake to UF6 gas, and this gas in turn is injected into centrifuges in Natanz , and enrichment is done on a 5 percent scale, which is needed for the reactors for generating energy. We completed fuel cycle, and it is entirely an indigenous technology. Of course we bought some equipment from others, but the trend of work is a domestic one. Meanwhile the west lost many valuable years and only emphasized on suspension. We cannot suspend uranium enrichment, because this is our right to make use of this technology, but as regards the concern for deviation towards military purposes, we are
ready to negotiate with them and remove their concerns vis-a-vis our peaceful programs.

Thank you