Iran has invited Russia, China, the European Union and its allies among the Arab and developing world to tour its nuclear sites.

Iran submitted a plan to swap some of its enriched uranium for reactor fuel in a bid to to evade new United Nations sanctions and said the onus was on world powers to defuse tensions by accepting the deal.

IRAN’S supreme leader and armed forces commander-in-chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said yesterday the country does not believe in and is not seeking atomic weapons, state television reported.

The United Nations nuclear agency said it feared Iran may presently be working on making a nuclear warhead, suggesting for the first time that Tehran had either resumed such work or never stopped at the time US intelligence thought it did.

Iran today told the UN nuclear agency that it will start enriching uranium to higher levels, shrugging off international fears that such a move will bring it closer to being able to make nuclear warheads.

UN NUCLEAR watchdog chiefs voted to rebuke Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in secret but Tehran dismissed the move as “intimidation” which would poison its negotiations with world powers.

The outgoing head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said he had reached a “dead end” investigating Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran’s nuclear envoy today denied that the UN inspectors’ tour of its recently revealed uranium enrichment site has turned up any evidence that the Islamic republic is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

THE UN’s atomic watchdog yesterday handed Iran and world powers a draft deal for approval by tomorrow that could dramatically ease tensions over the Islamic republic’s controversial nuclear programme.

Iran today signalled it would agree a deal to delay its capacity to produce nuclear weapons.

IRAN test-fired missiles yesterday to show it was prepared to head off any military threat, four days before the Islamic Republic is due to hold rare talks with world powers worried about its nuclear ambitions.

Iran today said its nuclear programme was irreversible, issuing yet another rejection of a UN Security Council deadline to cease enriching uranium.

Russia today said the Iranian nuclear crisis must be solved under the direction of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, and it called on Iran to co-operate more fully with the organisation.

IRAN defiantly rejected a United Nations call yesterday to reimpose a freeze on uranium enrichment.

IRAN is offering to suspend full-scale uranium enrichment - for up to two years - in a bid by Tehran to escape UN Security Council action over the activity, which can be used to make nuclear arms.

Iran says it is willing to continue holding discussions to resolve an international stand-off over its nuclear programme amid international pressure on Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment.