Iran yesterday 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. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that Iran's government is taking the country in the wrong direction, repressing its own people and pursuing confrontation abroad.
Straw said Britain wants the body to go one step at a time, leaving the door open to restart negotiations with Tehran if it reverses course and expresses a willingness to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
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.
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.
The US is insisting that Iran's case is taken up by the UN Security Council.
Ahmadinejad rejected the possibility of any dialogue with the US, who he branded as "the Great Satan" and Israel, whose existence Tehran does not recognise.
But Britain said that there was still time to resolve the standoff.
"We want, and I've been working on this for three years, to see a normalisation 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.
"If the Iranian regime chooses not to heed the concerns of the international community, it's going to damage the interests of the Iranian people." he said, speaking on Iran's future at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.
Despite the opportunities offered by the toppling of repressive governments in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, Straw said, "Sadly Iran is now going in the wrong direction and these chances ... are being squandered."
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Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses Iranian ambassadors based abroad during a meeting in Tehran. (AFP)