Iran vows to press on with nuclear work

Iran's leaders on Saturday dismissed the threat of fresh UN Security Council sanctions as Tehran announced an impending visit by the atomic watchdog deputy head for talks over Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
"The Iranian nation will pursue its right and the disturbances will have no effect," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying by state-run television.

Khamenei backed the defiant policy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has vowed Iran will not back down on its nuclear work in the face of international pressures.

"Iran's foreign policy has always been offensive. Unfortunately at certain times there was a defensive policy, which was a mistake," Khamenei said in a ceremony marking the second anniversary of Ahmadinejad's election.

"The policy of resistance to defend Iran's (nuclear) right will continue without any faltering," said the president.

The UN Security Council has already imposed two sets of sanctions against Iran after it failed to heed ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment, the process that makes nuclear fuel but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

The West suspects that Iran's nuclear programme is a cover for a push to develop the bomb, although Iran has said repeatedly that it is for civilian purposes only.

The Security Council could toughen Iran sanctions, which now target people and institutions involved in its nuclear and missiles programmes, and impose travel bans, freezing of bank accounts and inspections of Iranian cargo ships and aircraft.

But in comments published on Saturday, Ahmadinejad brushed off the threat saying: "They cannot hurt us, not that they don't want to but because they are incapable of doing so as they are in a difficult situation."

Ahmadinejad said "the global arrogance cannot stop the Iranian nation", in an allusion to the United States, the main ally of Israel, the only country in the Middle East believed to have a nuclear arsenal.

Washington has never ruled out military action to stop Iran's nuclear drive.

Iran says it is willing to resolve questions over the nature of its nuclear programme with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been unable to fully verify Iran's atomic work undeclared for 18 years.

Iran said on Saturday the IAEA deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, will visit Tehran from July 11 to 13 to "examine a work plan to respond to all remaining issues over Iran's nuclear programme."

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told ISNA news agency that Heinonen, who heads the Department of Safeguards, will be accompanied by IAEA officials "who are not inspectors and will not carry out any inspections into Iran's nuclear facilities."

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani invited the IAEA team to Tehran after talks last week in Vienna with UN watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

Larijani had undertaken to define within two months an action plan with the IAEA, which is demanding the possibility of checking on the ground whether Iran's nuclear programme has military ambitions.

Soltanieh said the visit will precede a new meeting between Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana who have held talks aimed at finding away out of the standoff.