UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to attend next week’s UN meeting next week aimed at reviving stalled global disarmament talks.
"The schedule has not been firmly set, but I understand [Ahmadinejad] is going to participate in the high-level meeting on disarmament," said Ban during a monthly news conference, and added that he had received a request from the Iranian President for a bilateral meeting while the Iranian president is in town. He did not discuss Iran's nuclear facilities and UN sanctions.
That meeting is scheduled for September 24, during the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York.
The UN Conference on Disarmament was created in 1978 and negotiated biological and chemical weapons conventions. However, the Conference has not been active for the last 12 years since its members could not agree on priorities. The September 24 summit will be the first time since 1998 that the Conference has met.
However, an historical meeting between Ahmadinejad and US President Barack Obama is unlikely to occur during the summit, as a US official told Reuters that Obama is unlikely to take part in the disarmament talks, since he will be participating in a UN summit meeting on Sudan and other meetings on that day. It is unclear as of yet who will be representing the US in the summit.
The US recently tightened its sanctions on Iran in an attempt to discourage its nuclear program. The sanctions penalize companies that sell gasoline to Iran or that do business with it.
The UN Security Council also recently imposed a fourth round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic. These sanctions include a ban on Iran's purchasing heavy weapons such as attack helicopters and missiles, as well as tougher rules on financial transactions with Iran's banks.
Last week’s report by the IAEA said that Iran continues to snub the UN and has produced 2.8 tons of enriched uranium. The report added that Iran refuses to allow UN inspectors into the country and noted that it recently took away the rights of two experienced inspectors to monitor Iran’s nuclear projects after they reported that Iran conducted undeclared nuclear experiments.
The report said that the "repeated objection by Iran to the designation of inspectors with experience in Iran's nuclear fuel cycle and facilities hampers the inspection process.”
Iran has rejected the allegations regarding its nuclear program, having repeatedly accused the US, Britain and France of double standards, since they allow Israel to have nuclear weapons and at the same time try to stop other countries from owning such weapons.