Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised statement on Monday that the United States was using the United Nations Security Council as a means of imposing itself on other parts of the world, while rejecting sanctions against North Korea for conducting a recent nuclear weapons test.
The president also said that UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea for conducting the weapons was "illegal", according to the AP.
Apparently referring to the US, Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying: "Some Western countries have turned the UN Security Council into a weapon to impose their hegemony and issue resolutions against countries that oppose them."
He added that the demand by the Security Council that Iran end its pursuit of nuclear power was illegitimate, and that Iran would continue its nuclear program unhindered by Security Council decisions. The Security Council passed a resolution calling North Korea's recent nuclear test was "a clear threat to international peace and security,"a decision which Ahmadinejad was apparently referring to in his statements on Iran's state-run television.
US representatives had hinted earlier that Iran should take a lesson from the recent Council decision against North Korea regarding its own nuclear program. "I hope the lesson they learn is that if they continue to pursue nuclear weapons, they will face the same kind of isolation and restrictions that we have just imposed on the North Koreans," said John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations.
