WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters/Times) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a radio interview said the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency offers “the best guarantee” that Iran can enrich uranium for peaceful uses, and said the United States “should cease putting pressure” on the agency.

In an interview aired on Tuesday on National Public Radio, Ahmadinejad also said diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States should advance, citing a willingness to cooperate on security in Iraq.
Asked about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program, Ahmadinejad said the United States should “extend at least the equivalent of one-tenth the cooperation we have extended” to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. “We believe that the IAEA itself offers the best guarantee,” he added.
In his interview with The Times he said Western intelligence documents questioning the peaceful purpose of Iran’s nuclear program were crude forgeries.
On U.S.-Iranian relations, Ahmadinejad said he has “taken lots of leaps forward in this respect,” adding: “I even said that I am prepared to talk at the United nations with them.”
He also said Iran “responded positively” to Washington’s request “to extend a hand of cooperation in a joint security commission involved in upholding a security force for Iraq. So we did whatever we could.”
Asked about alleged nuclear weaponization studies by Iran, Ahmadinejad said the nuclear agency was pressing its inquiry under pressure from the United States. “All the documentation was forged,” he asserted. “In fact, it was so funny and superficial and not in depth that a school kid could laugh at it.”
“The IAEA must act independently,” he told The Times.
The United States is unlikely to win approval this week for stepped-up financial and trade sanctions against Iran because Russia opposes the idea and China is reluctant. Foreign ministers of a six-nation group monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, which also includes Britain, France and Germany, are to meet on the sidelines of the General Assembly debate.
Ahmadinejad also compared his proposal for a Palestinian referendum on the future of Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip to the end of the Soviet Union.
“Let me create an analogy here -- where exactly is the Soviet Union today? It did disappear -- but exactly how? It was through the vote of its own people. So therefore in Palestine too we must allow the people, the Palestinians, to determine their own future,” he told the radio.
In his separate interview with The Times, he also asserted that Israel was doomed like “an airplane that has lost its engine”.
-------------- We’re interested in having friendly relations
In his interview with The Times on Monday, Ahmadinejad declared that the turmoil on Wall Street was rooted in part in U.S. military intervention abroad and voiced hope that the next American administration would retreat from what he called President Bush’s “logic of force.”
“Problems do not arise suddenly,” he said. “The U.S. government has made a series of mistakes in the past few decades. First, the imposition on the U.S. economy of heavy military engagement and involvement around the world . . . the war in Iraq, for example. . . . These are heavy costs.
“The world economy can no longer tolerate the budgetary deficit and the financial pressures occurring from markets here in the United States, and by the U.S. government,” he added.
“We do not believe that the U.S. policy perspective, looking at the rest of the world as a field of confrontation, will give good results,” he said.
Ahmadinejad said Bush’s policy have “harmed . . . people all around the world.”
“Any (U.S.) government that comes to power must change previous policy approaches,” he said, adding that he was ready to speak with either of the U.S. presidential candidates while in New York this week. “We’re interested in having friendly relations.”
The standoff between the United States and Iran has centered on Iran’s nuclear program and Tehran’s position toward Israel.
In discussing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, the Iranian leader said:
“Who are these people? Where did they come from?” he asked in reference to Jews who immigrated to Israel in the wake of the Nazi killings in Europe during World War II.
“If we agree and accept that certain events had occurred during World War II,” came the next sentence, “well, where did they indeed happen? In Germany, in Poland . . . . Now what does this exactly have to do with Palestine? Why is it that the Palestinian people should pay for it?”
Ahmadinejad said he was not concerned about Israel’s indirect talks with Syria mediated by Turkey.
“We believe that the freedom of the Golan Heights is exactly what the Zionist regime does not want,” the Iranian leader said. “We think it is very unlikely it will happen as a result of the negotiations.