TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran vowed to press on with its controversial nuclear activities and played down the threat of economic sanctions ahead of a key UN Security Council meeting on the country's atomic programme.
As the Islamic republic refused to back down in the face of international warnings to scale back nuclear fuel work, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was expected to give a keynote speech on the standoff.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "We know well that a country's backing down one iota on its undeniable rights is the same as losing everything".
"We will not bend to a few countries' threats as their demands for giving up our nation's rights are unfair and cruel," state television quoted him as saying on Monday.
The UN Security Council is to convene soon to call on Iran to comply with the demand of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspend all its sensitive uranium enrichment related activities.
The world body has the power to impose economic sanctions if Tehran refuses to budge.
But Iran's economy minister played down the threat of sanctions and said Tehran was prepared to handle any such measures.
"I am not worried about sanctions. It is unlikely that the Europeans decide on sanctions against us, but even if that is the case, it would rather harm them," Davoud Danesh-Jaafari told a press conference.
He added that Iran had provisioned 19.4 billion dollars in its foreign exchange reserve fund on January 20 to meet any possible economic sanctions.
Iran, which denies allegations by the United States that its nuclear programme is cover for weapons production, also vowed to press on with the construction of a second nuclear power station.
Iran is building its first civilian nuclear power station near the southern city of Bushehr with Russian help but the project has been hit by a string of delays.
It is to start work in the next six months on a second plant, press reports quoted the Energy Minister Parviz Fattah as saying.
Iran kicked off the recent standoff by refusing to comply with an IAEA demand to suspend the research activities on enrichment it had resumed on January 10.
Enriched uranium is used in nuclear fuel cycle but it can also make the core of an atomic bomb.
The United States is insisting that Iran's case is taken up by the UN Security Council.
Ahmadinejad rejected the possibility of any dialogue with the United States, who he branded as "the Great Satan" and Israel, whose existence Tehran does not recognize.
But Britain said Monday that there was still time to resolve the standoff over Iran's disputed nuclear program, adding that Tehran's unelected religious authorities were key to a solution.
"We want, and I've been working on this for three years, to see a normalization of relations with this country and it's still not too late for the Iranians to get back into negotiations with us," Straw said on the BBC.
During a speech later at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Straw was to say that any action by the United Nations to end the Iranian nuclear dispute must be "incremental and reversible".
He will attack the regime for taking the country "in the wrong direction" and demand it respects human rights, according to excerpts provided by Britain's domestic Press Association news agency.
Despite the day earlier threatening to walk out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday "leaving the NPT is not on our agenda now".
"We believe the ways of obtaining out rights to peaceful nuclear technology still lie in the international relations especially Iran's membership of the NPT," the student ISNA news agency quoted him saying.
