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WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Iran has proposed a global  system to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as cooperation on  Afghanistan and fighting terrorism, but will not discuss  halting its uranium enrichment programme, an Iranian official was  quoted as saying yesterday.

“Iran not only does not want to make nuclear weapons, but  is actually intensely against nuclear weapons,” Mojtaba Samareh  Hashemi, who ran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election  campaign and has held key positions at Iran’s foreign and  interior ministries, told the Washington Post.

He said that countries like Iran that have signed the  nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty were entitled to enrich  uranium — technology that can produce fuel for bombs or power  plants.

“It is very obvious that legal and lawful activities are  the right of every nation,” Samareh Hashemi said.
He said “Iran is trying to establish a new regime to  prevent nuclear weapons worldwide,” adding that the threat from  atomic weapons came from states that had them, not the Islamic  Republic.

Western countries suspect Tehran is developing atomic  weapons under cover of a civilian energy program. Iran has  rejected U.N. Security Council demands that it halt its  enrichment program, which it says will produce fuel for nuclear  power plants, not bombs.

Asked whether Iran’s proposal mentioned suspending its  uranium enrichment program, Samareh Hashemi said that “methods  of preventing development of nuclear weapons and a widespread  system for preventing … the proliferation of nuclear weapons  are a part of the package.”

He said Iran was proposing a system that “prevents  research, production, multiplying and keeping nuclear weapons  and also moves toward destruction of present nuclear weapons.”

“Iran is ready in this path to offer any and every kind of  cooperation and effort,” he said. “No country must be exempt  from this international framework against nuclear weapons.”
Samareh Hashemi provided no details of the Iranian plan.