IRAN:Iranian leaders vowed yesterday to press on with Tehran's disputed nuclear work regardless of any new UN sanctions, one day after world powers agreed the outline of a new resolution.
"The Iranian nation has chosen its path and will continue with it," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by student news agency ISNA. "Such illegal behaviour [by western powers] . . . will not divert the Iranian nation from its path."
The United States and other western powers fear Iran's nuclear activities are aimed at building nuclear weapons. Iran, the world's fourth-largest crude oil exporter, says its nuclear programme is to generate electricity.
World powers agreed on Tuesday on the outline of a third sanctions resolution against Iran, but diplomats said the draft did not contain the punitive economic measures for which Washington had been pushing.
The West has faced a diplomatic showdown with Iran since 2002 and the UN Security Council has already imposed two sets of sanctions - in December 2006 and March 2007.
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Berlin on Tuesday - after a nearly two-hour meeting with his counterparts from Britain, China, France, Russia and the US - that the new draft of a sanctions resolution would be presented to the UN Security Council in the coming weeks.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the new draft resolution was not tough or punitive and "welcomes the progress made between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency . . ."
"The measures in this draft do not have a tough sanctioning character," he said. Mr Lavrov's remarks suggested the US failed to win agreement in Berlin on punitive economic sanctions against Iran.
IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei won agreement from Iran this month to answer remaining questions about its past covert nuclear work within four weeks.
Western diplomats say expectations are low that leaders in Tehran will be forthcoming, but Iran says it has accelerated its co-operation with the IAEA since then. Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran had "good" co-operation with the agency.