Iran bars 38 nuclear inspectors

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran said Monday it has barred 38 members of a U.N. nuclear inspection team from entering the country, in what appeared to be retaliation for sanctions imposed last month over its contentious atomic program.\nForeign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said some inspectors were admitted but maintained that Iran could decide who should be turned away.\n"The International Atomic Energy Agency submits a long list of inspectors to member countries and the countries have the right to oppose the visit by some inspectors," Mottaki told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.\nThe head of the parliamentary committee of national security and foreign policy, Alaeddin Borojerdi, had been quoted by a students' news agency as saying Iran had barred \n38 inspectors.\nLast month, the U.N. Security Council imposed limited trade sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to cease uranium enrichment, a process that produces the material for nuclear reactors or bombs. Days later, the country's parliament passed a motion that obliged the government to revise its cooperation with the IAEA but gave it a free hand to determine the steps to be taken.\nThe United States and some of its allies accuse Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its program is only to produce electricity from nuclear sources.\nPresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come under increasing criticism for drawing the enmity of the international community with his aggressive handling of the nuclear issue, including among some conservative allies who feel he has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy.\nIn comments published Monday, Iran's most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, joined the criticism. He said Iranians have the right to nuclear power but questioned Ahmadinejad's dealings with the international community in obtaining it.\n"One has to deal with the enemy with wisdom, not provoke it," he said, according to a copy of his comments made available to The Associated Press. "This (provocation) only creates problems for the country," he told a group of reformists and opponents of Ahmadinejad on Friday in the holy city of Qom, 80 miles south of the capital Tehran.\nMontazeri, 85, is one of a few grand ayatollahs, the most senior theologians of the Shiite Muslim faith. He had been the designated successor of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, until he fell out with Khomeini shortly before his 1989 death after complaining about powers wielded by unelected clerics.\nPrices of fruit, vegetables and food staples have skyrocketed since the U.N. Security Council imposed the limited sanctions.\n"Some countries don't have oil and gas. Yet, they run their country and stand on their own. We have so much oil and gas but make useless expenditures work for others and don't think of our own people's problems and the price of basic commodities go higher and higher every day," Montazeri said,\nMontazeri appeared to be referring to Ahmadinejad's foreign trips, the latest of which was to Latin America, and to Iranian financial aid to \nthe Palestinians.\nThe Palestinian foreign minister for the Hamas-led government said in November while visiting Iran that Tehran had given his government more than $120 million in the previous year.