Tehran slams Obama ahead of nuclear summit

By Yu Miao

Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed US President Barack Obama Sunday for threatening a "nuclear attack" on Iran, just days before a nuclear security summit begins in Washington.

"He (Obama) has implicitly threatened Iranians with nuclear weapons," state television quoted Khamenei as saying.

He was referring to Washington's statement Tuesday that it would only use atomic weapons in "extreme circumstances" and would not attack non-nuclear states - but singled out "outliers" Iran and North Korea as exceptions.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that Tehran would lodge a formal complaint to the UN.

Earlier that day, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief, revealed that the Islamic republic will soon begin mass production of centrifuges capable of enriching uranium three times faster than existing systems.

Tehran's strong stance came as leaders from more than 40 countries gather in Washington for a two-day summit on nuclear security, described by The Los Angeles Times as "the biggest conference of its type in the US since the 1945 conference to create the UN."

The US has been lobbying the UN Security Council to impose a fourth set of sanctions against Tehran, but China and Russia are favoring diplomatic solutions to the issue.

Yang Yi, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the PLA National Defense University, told the Global Times that the US is unlikely to pressure China over Iran sanctions during the summit.

"The Washington summit will focus on nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear terrorism and Obama's idea of a nuclear-free world," Yang said. "It will be a conference of consensus building and morale boosting. Significant progress on problems such as the Iranian nuclear issue and the Six-Party Talks regarding North Korea are highly unlikely."

Meanwhile, Obama held separate talks Sunday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani at the Blair House, the official guesthouse of the US government.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that India and Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear weapons has been done "in a way that has upset the balance of nuclear deterrence."

"That's why we're working with both countries to make sure that ... they participate with us in trying to limit the number of nuclear weapons," she said in her speech on nuclear non-proliferation at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

She also said that North Korea possessed "between one and six nuclear weapons."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his trip to the summit.

Analysts suggested that Netanyahu is shying away from Arab leaders who may question Israel's non-participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty during the upcoming talks.

Agencies contributed to this story