Comments (0)Ahmadinejad: Iran Ready for Nuclear Cooperation
November 6, 2009Jerusalem
JTA Wire Service
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is ready to cooperate with the West on its nuclear program.
The West has “moved from confrontation to cooperation,” the Iranian president said Thursday in a speech broadcast live on state television, The New York Times reported.
“We welcome fuel exchange, nuclear cooperation, building of power plants and reactors, and we are ready to cooperate,” Ahmadinejad reportedly said.
Also Thursday, Iran reportedly delivered to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna its response to a proposal to further process its low-enriched uranium in another country for use in medical research, according to The New York Times.
A pro-government newspaper in Iran, Javan, reported Thursday, according to Reuters, that Iran will request two changes to the draft deal: that it ships its low-enriched nuclear fuel in stages and that there is a simultaneous exchange of its low-enriched uranium for already processed nuclear fuel.
Meanwhile, a team of inspectors who this week visited a recently disclosed nuclear enrichment plant located near the Iranian holy city of Qom returned Thursday to Vienna.
“We had a good trip,” said the mission’s head, adding that the IAEA would analyze the data and prepare a full report on the site, which Iran disclosed to the IAEA last month.
Italy’s President Pledges Support to Israel
Italy’s president stressed his country’s support for Israel and said the European Union would “do its part” to help bring peace in the Middle East.
President Giorgio Napolitano made his remarks Monday to representatives of the Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal, with whom he met at the presidential palace shortly before leaving on an official visit to Lebanon.
Keren Hayesod’s three-day International Leadership Reunion of mega-donors ends Tuesday.
Italy and Israel, Napolitano said, had a “friendship that transcends traditional political constraints, diplomatic or economic relations between states.”
Israel, he said, “can always count—in the complicated path to peace—on the strong support of Italy, which is shared by all the parliamentary forces and public opinion, and is driven by feelings of genuine sympathy and solidarity.”
Napolitano urged Israel to have faith in the European Union and its aspirations.
Europe, he said, “intends to further its efforts to do its part to promote peace in the Middle East in the awareness that this is an essential step for the stability of the area and the entire world.”
Petition Raps Norwegian University Vote on Israel Boycott
A European-based pro-Israel group is circulating a petition condemning plans for an Israel academic boycott initiated in Norway.
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which includes several Nobel laureates, is objecting to the possible boycott of Israeli scholars and academic institutions by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
The university’s board is to vote on the recommended boycott on Nov. 12 following a lecture on Israel’s alleged use of anti-Semitism as a political tool. The lecture is part of a six-session seminar on Israel that has been given by Norwegians and Israelis known for highly critical attitudes toward Israel.
Critics called on “academic colleagues from around the world ... to refute and condemn the campaign” at the university, according to a statement released Saturday.
“We stand in solidarity with Israeli academics and academic institutions; if you boycott them, boycott us as well,” the online petition reads in part.
In addition, academic and other employees at the university, Norway’s second largest, stated their opposition in a letter to the boards of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Sor-Trondelag University College.
“Even we who sign this petition have different views as to how the conflict should be solved,” wrote Professor Bjorn Alsberg and colleagues.
They argued that adopting such a boycott would harm the university’s international reputation as an educational institution, would cause internal rifts among staff and would force the university to take a stand on “other nations who perform far worse human rights violations.”
As of Monday, the petition had more than 1,000 signers, including Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow, economics, Stanford University; Roald Hoffmann, chemistry, Cornell University; Steven Weinberg, physics, the University of Texas; and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, physics, Ecole Normale Superieure.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.