TEHRAN - Iranian Minister of Science, Research and Technology Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi condemned the scientific apartheid imposed by certain Western states.

"Certain European countries have created a kind of scientific apartheid. They do not permit researchers of other states do research in specific courses," Zahedi told the Islamic republic news agency on the sidelines of the UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education 2009 in Paris on Sunday.

"We regard this approach as a kind of discrimination and call for a fight against it," he added. The minister said that sciences should not be monopolized by certain countries and called on other states to support Iran in a fight against scientific apartheid.

The four-day UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education 2009 opened in Paris Sunday. It plans to build squarely on the fundamental principles set out by delegates to the first conference in 1998.

More than 1,000 delegates from governments, national, regional and international organizations, and individual higher education institutions will tackle the new dynamics of higher education and research, in particular shaping strategies for societal change and development.