Tehran, May 24, IRNA – A former Iranian foreign minister here Saturday evening supported country’s nuclear negotiation team’s competence, arguing that delivering the task from Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) to Foreign Ministry was a right decision by new government.

“The first field in foreign policy which has got intermingled with the country’s other affairs is the nuclear issue,” said Manouchehr Mottaki in an address for a group of Foreign Ministry College graduates, majoring in Indian subcontinent affairs.

Terming the nuclear issue “a national project”, he compared the challenges that some world powers have created for Iran regarding the Iranian peaceful nuclear program with the military invasion challenge of the former Iraqi dictator who was backed by all world powers of the time, aimed at making the Islamic Revolution face defeat.


“The nuclear issue, as many commentators and elite personalities have often opined, is no big deal, and I had in many meetings with foreign officials made sure that they, too, know this fact for sure that Iran is not after acquiring nuclear weapons, and even the Americans know this well,” he added.


He said that once a system realizes that an issue has become a challenge against its existence the first counter-offense move is to define it as a national project, adding that during his days as the country’s top diplomat he had never permitted the nuclear issue’s solid management system to be disturbed.


"If we support the nuclear negotiation team today it is in the framework of the dire need for every individual to heed their duties and to play their parts in safeguarding the nuclear program,” he said.

Justifying his support for President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to commission to Foreign Ministry to heed the nuclear discussions instead of the SNSC, he said that both in the past and in the 5+1 Group, the Iranian negotiation teams’ counterparts have been deputy foreign ministers.

On competence of the country’s nuclear negotiation team, too, he said that the matter has always been in the focus of attention of the system officials, both in the past and today, as a dire necessity.


By IRNA

 

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