US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to isolate Iran at UN nuclear talks here Monday when she dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-US charges as "wild accusations."

At the opening of the three-week long nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, Clinton put Iran among a "few outliers" that have flouted international rules designed to check the spread of atomic weapons.

North Korea is another outlier, the chief US diplomat said in a speech.

She urged delegates from around 150 NPT signatories to avoid past pitfalls in which participants fracture into different blocs like those with nuclear weapons against those without and western nations against non-aligned.

"This time must be different," Clinton said, turning her fire on Iran.

"This morning, Iran's president offered the same tired, false, and sometimes wild accusations against the United States and other parties at this conference," she said.

In an earlier speech, Ahmadinejad triggered a walkout by US and other delegates when he blasted the United States for threatening to use atomic weapons.

Washington has launched various initiatives to give weight to President Barack Obama's vow to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

In a new US nuclear policy unveiled last month, Obama restricted the use of atomic weapons against non-nuclear states that comply with the NPT.

The stand left North Korea and Iran out in the cold.

Clinton said it is "not surprising" that the Iranian leader would try to divert attention from Iran's non-compliance with its NPT obligations.

"As you all heard this morning, Iran will do whatever it can to divert attention away from its own record and to attempt to evade accountability," Clinton said.

For example, she charged that Ahmadinejad had falsely claimed that Iran was willing to exchange nuclear fuel as part of an October 2009 confidence-building offer from the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"Iran is the only country represented in this hall that the IAEA board of governors has found to be currently in non-compliance with its nuclear safeguards obligations," she said.

"It has defied the UN Security Council and the IAEA and placed the future of the non-proliferation regime in jeopardy. And that is why it is facing increasing isolation and pressure from the international community," she said.

"Iran will not succeed in its efforts to divert and divide," she said.

She hammered home the same remarks in a post-speech news conference.

"It appears that Iran's president came here today with no intention of improving the NPT," she said.

"He came to distract attention from his own government's failure to live up to its international obligations, to evade accountability for defying the international community and to undermine our shared commitment to strengthening the treaty," she said.

"But he will not succeed."

Clinton then alluded to the months-long painstaking US-led drive to impose tougher UN sanctions against Iran that has met resistance from some Security Council members such as Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon.

"Potential violators must know that they will pay a high price for breaking the rules," she told delegates attending the review conference of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, signed by 189 countries.

earlier related report
Iranian president blasts US for nuclear threats
United Nations (AFP) May 3, 2010 - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a UN conference here Monday to blast the United States for threatening to use atomic weapons, triggering a walkout by US and other delegates.

"Regrettably, the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons but also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries, including Iran," Ahmadinejad told the opening session of a meeting reviewing the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to speak later in the day, with the US-Iranian nuclear standoff clearly looming large over the conference, which runs through May 28.

Clinton had warned Sunday that Iran would try to divert attention at the crucial meeting from its violations of its obligations under the NPT which it has signed along with 188 other states.

Ahmadinejad said having nuclear weapons was "disgusting and shameful, and even more shameful is the threat to use or to use such weapons."

In Washington, the Defense Department was set to release previously classified statistics on the size of the US nuclear arsenal.

This is part of a US drive to prove it is serious about disarmament and transparency about its nuclear weapons.

Washington has launched various initiatives recently to give weight to President Barack Obama's vow to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The NPT review is an attempt to tighten up the non-proliferation regime, which is based on monitoring national nuclear programs as well as promoting both disarmament and the peaceful use of atomic energy.

In his 35-minute speech, Ahmadinejad called for the United States to be suspended from the UN atomic watchdog's executive board over its threats to use nuclear weapons.

"How can the United States be a member of the board of governors (of IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency) when it used nuclear weapons against Japan" and also used depleted uranium weapons in the war against Iraq, he said.

Besides the United States, fellow nuclear powers Britain and France walked out. Non-nuclear states which also left included Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic and Morocco, according to a Western diplomat.

Ahmadinejad also called for an independent body to set a deadline for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, in a wide-ranging speech on saving the non-proliferation regime from what he said were abuses by nuclear powers.

He said states without nuclear weapons have not "been able to exercise their inalienable and legal rights for peaceful use of nuclear energy without facing pressures and threats."

UN chief Ban Ki-moon earlier urged nuclear weapons states to reaffirm unequivocally a vow to scrap atomic weapons.

But IAEA chief Yukiya Amano brought up the issue of Iranian non-compliance with NPT obligations when he told the conference that his UN nuclear watchdog was unable to confirm that all Iranian nuclear activities are peaceful.

Iran is under three rounds of sanctions to get it to stop enriching uranium, even though it insists its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity.

The United States is seeking a fourth, more stringent, round.

Iran is seen as a test case for non-proliferation as its getting the bomb could set off an atomic arms race in the Middle East.

Another stumbling block at the conference will be Egypt's insistence, backed by non-aligned states, that there should be an international conference on creating a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

The 1995 review conference had called for such a zone. Review conferences are held every five years.

Israel is not a member of the NPT and is believed to have some 200 atom bombs. It says there must be peace in the Middle East before setting up a weapons-free zone.

The NPT bargain is that nuclear weapons states move towards disarmament while other states forswear the bomb in return for peaceful nuclear energy.

But some nations insist the bargain has broken down. This will make it hard to agree on measures such as universalizing the NPT or even adopting a final document at the month-long review.