Iran vowed on Tuesday to press ahead with nuclear activities that could be used to develop weapons and accused the United States and Israel of threatening international peace with their own atomic arsenals.‘‘Iran is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology including (uranium) enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes,’’ Kharrazi told a United Nations-sponsored conference on nuclear disarmament.‘‘It is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of non-proliferation,’’ he said.Iran also criticized the US , which accuses Tehran of using its nuclear programme as a front for developing nuclear weapons, for not scrapping its own atomic arsenal as required under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.Kharrazi also had a few words about Iran’s other enemy, Israel, whose assumed nuclear arsenal he said ‘‘has endangered regional and global peace and security’’.Rising tensions about Iran as well as North Korea, which has said it has nuclear arms, dominated the opening of a month long review conference of the NPT, the cornerstone of atomic disarmament pacts.The United States on Monday pressed the conference of 188 nations to ensure Tehran and Pyongyang are denied peaceful nuclear energy benefits because they had violated the treaty.‘‘For almost two decades, Iran has conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons program,’’ Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker said. “We dare not look the other way.’’ —Reuters
