Iranian President rejects UN call

Iran said yesterday it would pursue uranium enrichment in defiance of outside pressure, a day before the UN nuclear watchdog delivers a verdict on whether Tehran has met UN Security Council demands.

"If you think by frowning at us, by issuing resolutions... you can impose anything on the Iranian nation or force it to abandon its obvious right, you still don't know its power," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in northwest Iran.

"We have obtained the technology for producing nuclear fuel... No one can take it away from our nation."

Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is widely expected to tell the council and the agency's board today that Iran has not stopped purifying uranium or satisfied IAEA queries as the top UN body asked a month ago.

The West accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian programme. Tehran, which denies the charge, said this month it had processed uranium to the level used in power stations for the first time and planned large-scale enrichment.

The United States, backed by Britain and France, favours limited sanctions if Iran refuses to halt enrichment very soon. Russia and China, the UN Security Council's other two veto-holding permanent members, have so far opposed such moves.

"To be credible, the UN Security Council of course has to act," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before talks on the issue with Nato foreign ministers in Bulgaria.

"It cannot have its word and its will simply ignored by a (UN) member state."

More defiance from Iran, however, was what she said she expected, deeming it "highly unlikely" Tehran would comply with international demands and suspend uranium enrichment.

Rather than pushing for sanctions immediately, the Western powers may put forward a resolution to make UN demands set out in a March 29 council statement legally binding.

They would propose punitive measures if Iran did not comply reasonably promptly, said a council diplomat in New York.

An exiled opposition group said Iran was working at secret military sites to develop a better type of centrifuge than the "P-1" machines at its Natanz enrichment plant, which would allow it to make fuel for an atom bomb faster than current estimates.