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The United States will call for “even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a TV interview broadcast here.

Washington remained concerned about what she called Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons,” which could “be very destabilizing in the Middle East and beyond,” Clinton told the private television network Globovision.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian energy purposes.

“We would ask the world to join us in imposing even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime,” Clinton said in the interview, which was broadcast late Tuesday.