Ahmadinejad: Iran stands for peace and nuclear-weapons-free world

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who arrived in the United States to attend the annual General Assembly of the United Nations, said Sunday that "the future belongs to Iran.”

“We consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations. We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country,” said Ahmadinejad. "Those who insist on having hostilities with us, kill and destroy the option of friendship with us in the future, which is unfortunate because it is clear the future belongs to Iran and that enmities will be fruitless,” he added.

Iranian leader stressed that his government did not want an atomic bomb and that Iran was only seeking peace and a nuclear-weapons-free world. In an interview he said that anti-nuclear sanctions against his government would have no effect.

"We are not afraid of nuclear weapons. The point is that if we had in fact wanted to build a nuclear bomb, we are brave enough to say that we want it. But we never do that. We are saying that the arsenal of nuclear bombs (worldwide) has to be destroyed as well," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.