TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president on Tuesday dismissed a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration and the West for Tehran to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The United States warned Iran to take the deadline seriously.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also accused the U.S. of fabricating a purported Iranian secret document that appears to lay out a plan for developing a critical component of an atomic bomb.
Ahmadinejad’s remarks underscored Tehran’s defiance in the nuclear standoff - and also sought to send a message that his government has not been weakened by the protest movement sparked by June’s disputed presidential election.He spoke a day after the latest opposition protest by tens of thousands mourning a dissident cleric who died over the weekend.
In other developments, three Americans arrested in July after crossing into Iran from neighboring Iraq are still under investigation, prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said Tuesday as he underlined Tehran’s concern about 11 Iranians it says are being held in the U.S.
Iranian officials have repeatedly mentioned the cases together, and U.S. officials have been concerned that Iran could try to use the detained Americans as bargaining chips. The Tehran prosecutor did not explicitly link their case to those of the 11 Iranians.
The prosecutor did not go into details about the case of the three Americans, whose families say they were trekking in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region and accidentally strayed over the unmarked border with Iran.
Dowlatabadi said in November that the three were accused of espionage, though it was not clear if they were formally charged with spying.
As to the nuclear issue, President Barack Obama has set a rough deadline of the end of this year for Iran to respond to an offer of dialogue. Washington and its allies are warning of new, tougher sanctions on Iran if it doesn’t respond.
The U.N.-proposed deal isthe centerpiece of the West’s diplomatic effort. Under the deal, Tehran would ship most of its stockpile of lowenriched uranium abroad to be processed into fuel rods, which would ease the West’s fears that the material could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which denies it seeks to build a bomb, has balked at the deal’s terms.
The international community can give Iran “as many deadlines as they want, we don’t care,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to thousands of supporters in the southern city of Shiraz.
“We told you that we are not afraid of sanctions against us, and we are not intimidated,” he said, addressing the West. “If Iran wanted to make a bomb, we would be brave enough to tell you.”
The U.S. responded sternly. “It is a very real deadline forthe international community,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
In a separate interview with ABC News, Ahmadinejad accused the U.S. of forging the document that appears to describe an Iranian work plan for developing a neutron initiator, a key component in detonating a nuclear bomb.
“They are all a fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government.” He said the accusations that Iran seeks a weapon has “turned into a repetitive and tasteless joke.” The comments were aired Monday night.
The memo was first reported in the British newspaper Times of London. U.S. officials have said it’s unclear whether the document is real.
Iran says its nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity and that it has a right to proceed with uranium enrichment, which the United Nations has demanded it suspend. The process canproduce low-enriched uranium used to fuel a nuclear reactor - or higher enriched uranium, which is the basis for building a nuclear warhead.
Meanwhile, Iran on Tuesday said its recent takeover of an Iraqi oil well was the result of a “misunderstanding” and called for the two nations to open talks to clearly demarcate their border.
The Iranian and Iraqi foreign ministers spoke over the weekend and agreed to re-establish a long-standing joint border committee, said Ramin Mehmanparast, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry. He said it was critical that the committee immediately get down to work.
Iranian forces seized the No. 4 well at the al-Fakkah oil field last Thursday, immediately raising tensions between the uneasy allies, who fought a war from 1980-1988. The Iranians withdrew early Sunday.
Information for this article was contributed by Jenny Barchfield of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 9 on 12/23/2009