Iran rejects report of atom bomb trigger
Documents revealed last week that appear to show Tehran is working on a nuclear bomb trigger were "forged" by Washington, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told a US news network.
Washington: Documents revealed last week that appear to show Tehran is working on a nuclear bomb trigger were "forged" by Washington, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told a US news network.
"They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government," Ahmadinejad told ABC News in an interview aired on Monday, when asked about the confidential documents first revealed in London's The Times newspaper.
The obtained documents describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. The Times claimed foreign intelligence agencies dated the documents to early 2007 — four years after Tehran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.
‘Tasteless joke'
Describing charges that Iran is continuing work on a clandestine nuclear weapons programme as "a repetitive and tasteless joke", Ahmadinejad said the reports about a trigger were "fundamentally not true." US President Barack Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod termed the accusation as "nonsense".
Ahmadinejad also dismissed a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration and the West for Tehran to accept a UN-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel.
