Iran's chief nuclear negotiator called for a global nuclear weapons ban Monday but insisted all nations - including his own - have the right to develop nuclear energy. Visiting Tokyo to meet with senior Japanese officials, Saeed Jalili said his country's nuclear program is for civilian purposes, although the US and other nations fear its goal is to produce weapons. “The crime that was committed in Hiroshima must never be repeated,” Jalili told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, referring to the United States' dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II. “All the efforts of the world should be directed toward the eradication of these weapons,” he said. The administration of US President Barack Obama - who has also called for a world free of nuclear weapons - has given a rough deadline of year-end for Iran to respond to an offer of engagement and show that it would allay world concerns about its nuclear program. At the same time that it is trying to engage with Iran, the Obama administration has also been building momentum toward imposing more sanctions after the revelation in September that Iran was secretly building a second uranium-enrichment facility near Qom. In Paris on Monday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said there is no other choice than for the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions on Iran for Tehran's refusal to cooperate with international authorities on its nuclear program. Kouchner says that he believes that all of the UNSC members will support new sanctions, which he says will be precise and target members of Irani President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government and its supporters. The Security Council is expected to take up the issue in January. In the meantime, the US and its allies are pressing Tehran to accept a UN-brokered plan under which Iran would ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium out of the country. That would temporarily leave Iran without enough uranium stockpiles to enrich further to produce a nuclear weapon. Under the plan, the low-enriched uranium would be converted into fuel rods that would be returned to Iran for use in a research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes. Fuel rods cannot be further enriched into weapons
