TEHRAN - Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Thursday the United States and Europe, by seeking to bar the country from enriching uranium, want to prevent it from developing.
"The United States and Europe, despite their differences, are united in pressuring Iran to renounce the enrichment of uranium because enrichment is a road toward scientific progress, and if a people travel that road the oppressors will have less effect on them," he told a group of students.
"The reason the United States and Europe are hostile to Iran progressing in the field of nuclear technology is because they do not want the Iranian people to progress," he said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
"The United States is trying to lead the Iranian people to believe that they cannot resist American domination, so everyone should work to thwart the American objective," he added.
Britain, France and Germany have been negotiating with Iran since December in a bid to convince it to give objective guarantees that its atomic energy program is purely for peaceful purposes, offering in exchange nuclear, trade and technological cooperation.
But the Europeans recognise that their efforts are doomed to fail without the support of the United States, which is convinced Iran is using its program to secretly develop nuclear weapons.
03/03/2005 19:38 GMT