Iran dismisses rumors of nuclear ties with China

@T=TEHRAN (FNA) - Iran’s embassy in Beijing on Wednesday denied recent allegations by a U.S. newspaper about Tehran’s nuclear cooperation with China, calling it “a baseless claim”.
“Iran and China enjoy normal relations and cooperation based on international laws and their own regulations,” the embassy stressed in a statement issued in Beijing today.
These claims have been made by those who are supported by Israel and the U.S. and whose goal is impairing Iran-China all-out ties, the statement added.
A report by an Iranian counterrevolutionary journalist, Amir Taheri who lives in Europe, alleged that China is due to build 20 nuclear plants in Iran within the next 10 years.
Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.
Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s illegitimate calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.
Tehran has dismissed West’s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians’ national resolve to continue the path.
Iran insists that it should continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.
Iran currently suffers from an electricity shortage that has forced the country into adopting a rationing program by scheduling power outages - of up to two hours a day - across both urban and rural areas.