"Negotiations and contradictory actions afterwards are not appropriate. Therefore we believe that for any request for negotiations, first the objectives should be set up," Mottaki said.

Mottaki slammed the Security Council resolution, which tightened existing sanctions to try to force Iran to give up its programme of uranium enrichment and cooperate further with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Russia and China both supported the resolution, in a change from their usual reticence on the issue.

"We believe that the action taken by the Security Council has been a bullet shot towards the dignity of the Security Council," Mottaki said.

"There is no difference between the members of the Security Council," he added.

Iran has been holding talks for almost two years with the European Union nominally aimed at making a deal over its nuclear programme, but Tehran has always refused to give ground on the key issue of enrichment.

"The nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been peaceful," Mottaki stressed.

He also insisted that the tightened sanctions will have no impact on Iran's economy.

"I want to assure that those who think that the sanctions cause problems for the Islamic Republic... are definitely wrong," the foreign minister said.

"We have been able to take long steps for the improvement of the country in different fields" such as science and technology, despite US economic sanctions since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Mottaki said.

"For the first time, our country is practically involved in the production of many industrial goods," he added.

The minister was also defiant over Tehran's support for the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and European Union.

Mottaki attended the funeral of murdered Hezbollah leader Imad Mughnieh in Lebanon last month.

The Islamic republic, along with its regional ally Syria, is accused of arming and financing Hezbollah, although Iran insists it only gives the Shiite militant group political support.

"Our support to the Lebanese resistance is a moral support," Mottaki said.

"We support their position of resistance, their position to insist on standing up to the attacks and aggressions of others," he said.

Israel occupied part of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, during which time Hezbollah assumed the mantle of a resistance force. Following Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah still claims this role as the disputed Shebaa Farms area is still occupied.

Israel also launched a ferocious military assault against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Beirut in summer 2006, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians.

The assault was launched after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel from southern Lebanon, and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.

"Beside the Arab countries and Islamic countries we have a joint effort for the reconstruction of Lebanon," Mottaki said.

Iran is also regularly accused of funding the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza and other occupied Palestinian territories.

Again, Mottaki insisted that "our support to Palestinians is humanitarian assistance and moral support".

Israel claims that the long-range Grad rockets fired by Hamas militants into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip are made in Iran.

earlier related report
EU, US challenge Iran over nuclear allegations at IAEA
The European Union and the United States challenged Tehran on Wednesday to disprove allegations that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

On the last day of a meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, western countries insisted the onus was on Iran to actively disprove the allegations, instead of simply dismissing them.

"They have to come back and respond in a serious way to these issues," the Norwegian Ambassador Ole Lundby told reporters.

"If they don't ... we may end up in a worse situation," he said. "Everyone has spent a lot of time and hope trying to put the past out of the way. If we don't do that, then we have serious problem. We'll reach a dead end."

The IAEA board meeting was held against the backdrop of the UN Security Council's decision Monday to slap further sanctions on the Islamic Republic over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work.

EU countries had been hoping to table an anti-Iran resolution of their own to the IAEA board, but decided to drop it after failing to drum up sufficient support for it amid objections from Russia, China and developing countries.

The US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, listed questions that were troubling western countries after detailed intelligence from a number of different independent sources was shown to the IAEA board last week.

Schulte said Iran must explain:

-- charts on a uranium conversion process different from Iran's declared activities.

-- a document on the casting and machining of uranium metal into the shape of warheads.

-- schematics of a Shahab-3 missile re-entry vehicle that in the opinion of the IAEA "is quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device".

-- remote explosives testing, including plans for underground detonations facilities and a separate firing facility 10 kilometres (six miles) away.

Speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, British Ambassador Simon Smith dismissed Tehran's charge that it had not been given sufficient time to respond to the allegations.

"There can be no suggestion that any of these questions somehow came out of the blue," Smith said. "On the contrary, these are questions in which the agency has been seeking a substantive response from Iran for some time."

Smith complained that Tehran's answers had been "less than satisfactory", forcing the conclusion that Iran was deliberately being obstructive.

Norwegian envoy Ole Lundby said that most countries did not dispute Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. But the onus was on Tehran to prove that there was no hidden military dimension to its atomic drive, he said.

The Director General of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said that simple denials on Iran's part were not sufficient and that concrete proof was needed to show that the allegations were unfounded.

In his address to the board, Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, reiterated his charge that the intelligence was fake.

It was "just a bunch of worthless allegations and print-outs of an unknown laptop which has no authenticity and the possessor of them is unidentified and said to be dead," he said.

The information constituted "politically motivated propaganda" aimed at "tarnishing the positive atmosphere of cooperation" between Iran and the IAEA, Soltanieh said.

The US had repeatedly made "unfounded allegations" in the past in an effort to keep the Iranian nuclear dossier open, he added.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Soltanieh was evasive when asked whether Iran was willing to hold further talks with the EU on the nuclear issue.

"The nuclear issue belongs with the IAEA," he said.

"The IAEA has to do deal with it. No other international body should do it."

Nevertheless, he added: "We are going to have dialogue with all, including the European Union, and with the distinguished diplomat, Mr Solana. But talking about the nuclear issue belongs in Vienna."

Earlier in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected a Security Council call for further talks with EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has been meeting Tehran on behalf of six world powers for almost two years.

earlier related report
Iran nuclear dossier divides IAEA board
The Iranian nuclear dossier was the object of lively debate here Wednesday, a day after a Western push for an anti-Iran resolution was scuppered by Russia, China and developing countries.

On the third day of a meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy here, Iran was the last major topic on the agenda.

A day earlier, European countries had failed to drum up support for an anti-Iran resolution with its opponents arguing such a move was superfluous following Monday's UN Security Council decision to step up sanctions against Tehran.

Speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, British Ambassador Simon Smith complained that Tehran's answers on a number of outstanding issues had been "less than satisifactory" and Iran's record in complying with UN and IAEA resolutions was "abysmal".

"We are obliged to conclude that Iran has chosen up to now the non-cooperative path. As long as Iran's choice remains one of non-cooperation, we for our part will remain determined to demonstrate the costs and consequences of that choice," Smith said.

US Ambassador Gregory Schulte also insisted that despite some progress on past issues, the Iranian file was far from being closed, as Tehran repeatedly claimed.

"Iran's leaders say that they do not have a nuclear weapons programme. To give the world confidence that this is true, we call on them to fully disclose past and present activities and suspend those that are not necessary for a civil programme, but are necessary to build a nuclear weapon," Schulte said, referring to Tehran's uranium enrichment activities.

"Until then, Iran's nuclear file remains open."

Norwegian envoy Ole Lundby said that most countries did not dispute Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. But the onus was on Tehran to prove that there was no hidden military dimension to its atomic drive, he said.

"They have to come back and respond in a serious way to these issues," Lundby told reporters.

"If they don't ... we may end up in a worse situation," he said. "Everyone has spent a lot of time and hope trying to put the past out of the way. If we don't do that, then we have serious problem. We'll reach a dead-end."

It was crucial Iran come up with answers to the outstanding issues by the time of the next board meeting in June, Lundby said.

The idea behind a separate IAEA resolution had been to press Iran to clear up allegations of purported nuclear weapons work.

Last week, the IAEA board was shown intelligence from a number of independent sources that suggested Tehran was involved in a uranium conversion project, high explosives tests and a missile re-entry vehicle modified to accommodate what could be a nuclear warhead.

Iran has dismissed the intelligence as fake and the allegations as baseless and an attempt by the United States to politicise the IAEA.

But ElBaradei said that simple denials were not sufficient and that concrete proof was needed to show that the allegations were unfounded.

Meanwhile, Cuban Ambassador Norma Goicchea Estenoz, who chairs the so-called Non-Aligned Movement including countries such as South Africa and Cuba, praised Iran's "pro-active cooperation" in resolving the outstanding issues.

In a recent report, IAEA chief IAEA Mohammed ElBaradei asserted that most of the issues were indeed "no longer outstanding".

Nevertheless, Iran still had to address allegations it was involved in covert nuclear weapons work. And until it did so, the agency could not determine once and for all the peaceful nature of Iran's atomic activities, ElBaradei said.

South Africa's ambassador Abdul Samad Minty insisted his country "does not wish to see a nuclear weaponised Iran.

"At the same time, we also don't want to see the denial of the right of any state party to the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) to exploit nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," he said.

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