The new US intelligence review, stating that Iran stopped developing an atomic weapons programme in 2003, is a “declaration of victory” for Iran’s nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday.

The US intelligence report released on Monday concluded that Iran had stopped its weapons programme in late 2003 and shown no signs since of resuming it, representing a sharp turnaround from a previous intelligence assessment in 2005.

“This is a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers over the nuclear issue,” Ahmadinejad told thousands of people during a visit to Ilam province in western Iran.

“This was a final shot to those who, in the past several years, spread a sense of threat and concern in the world through lies of nuclear weapons,” Ahmadinejad said, drawing celebratory whistles from the crowd.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would not directly respond to Ahmadinejad’s remarks, but told reporters in the Ethiopian capital on Wednesday that the US intelligence report’s public release showed the Bush administration was committed to transparent democracy while Iran was not.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, meanwhile, said there was no proof that Iran has ever run a nuclear weapons programme. “Data that we have seen don’t allow to say with certainty that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons programme,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday when asked to comment on the US intelligence report.

Iran has touted the report as vindication of its claims that its nuclear program is peaceful and Iranian officials insist that Washington should take a less hawkish stance and drop attempts to impose new sanctions in light of the report’s surprise conclusions.

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