A reported confidential Iranian technical document describing Tehran's efforts to design a nuclear bomb trigger was forged by Washington, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed.
Mr Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC News about a report in the London Times last week on what it called a confidential Iranian technical document describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the part of a nuclear warhead that sets off an explosion.
"They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government," he told the US network last night in an interview in Copenhagen, Denmark, after he attended the United Nations conference on climate change.
Reports that Iran is working on a bomb trigger are "fundamentally not true," said Mr Ahmadinejad.
On December 14th, the newspaper published what it said was the Farsi-language document, along with an English translation, entitled, "Outlook for Special Neutron-Related Activities Over the Next Four Years".
The document describes steps to develop and test parts for a neutron initiator, a device that floods the core of highly enriched uranium with subatomic particles to touch off the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion.
In a televised speech in southern Iran today, Mr Ahmadinejad said the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Israel should be dismantled.
"They must know that the Iranian nation and all the world's nations will continue resisting until the complete (nuclear) disarmament of America and all arrogant powers," he told a crowd at a stadium in the city of Shiraz.
Dismissing Western allegations about Iran's nuclear ambitions, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "You should know that if we had any intention of building a bomb, we would have had enough guts and courage to announce that without any fear from you."
Iran appears to be on course to miss the West's year-end deadline for it to accept an enrichment fuel deal aimed at calming international fears about its nuclear programme. If that happens, Washington has made clear it intends to pursue harsher sanctions against Iran in the United Nations.
The White House said today it has begun to take steps if Iran is unwilling to "pursue its responsibilities" on the nuclear issue. "We've begun to take those steps, if Iran is unwilling to pursue its responsibilities," said spokesman Robert Gibbs.
Mr Ahmadinejad said in Shiraz: "Who are they to set us a deadline? We set them a deadline that if they do not correct their attitude and behaviour and literature we will demand from them the Iranian nation's historic rights."
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more gas and oil. The West believes Iran wants bombs from enrichment because of its record of nuclear secrecy.
Reuters