Iran dismisses West's worries

"Western concern over nuclear proliferation is a big lie," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday while his US counterpart again called on Tehran to halt its atomic programme.

Speaking on a visit to Indonesia, Mr Ahmadinejad accused Iran's critics of hypocrisy on the nuclear issue.

"They are themselves engaged in nuclear activities and they are expanding day by day. They test new brands of weapons of mass destruction everyday," he told a news conference. "Big powers pretend (they) are concerned, but it's a big lie," he added.

Washington and its European allies are seeking a UN Security Council resolution that would oblige Iran to halt all uranium enrichment work or face possible sanctions. Tehran says it only wants to produce low-grade enriched uranium to use in atomic power reactors, not the highly enriched uranium needed to make bombs.

US President George W. Bush said a lengthy letter from Mr Ahmadinejad this week failed to answer international demands that Iran stop work which could be used to make nuclear arms.

Mr Ahmadinejad's 18-page letter was the first publicly announced communication from an Iranian President to a US President since the break between the two countries after Iran's 1979 revolution.

It discussed alleged American foreign policy misdeeds and defended scientific research as a basic right of nations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country, along with China, has so far resisted Washington's calls for tougher UN action on Iran, issued a veiled warning to the US not to take military action against the Islamic state.

In an apparent reference to mounting tension between the US and Iran, he said: "Methods of force rarely give the desired result and often their consequences are even more terrible than the original threat."