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Ahmadinejad considers nuclear deal

"We will give a response in due time in line with the international interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian president

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday the international incentive offer to curtail his nation's nuclear program would be carefully considered.

"We regard the offer of a package as a step forward and I have instructed my colleagues to carefully consider it," Ahmadinejad, in China for the leaders' summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, told a press conference.

"We will give a response in due time in line with the international interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Ahmadinejad was commenting on the offer -- put forward this month by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany -- of incentives to Tehran if it agreed to suspend uranium enrichment.

Uranium enrichment makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.

The US has led international warnings that Iran intends to build a nuclear weapons program.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is only for energy purposes and that it has a right to enrich uranium.

"We are not seeking to develop nuclear weapons," Ahmadinejad said.

He then sought to focus attention on the fact the US dropped atomic bombs in Japan at the end of World War II, becoming the first and only nation to use nuclear weapons.

"Pay attention to the fact that Hiroshima is only a few hundred kilometers away," he said, referring to one of the Japanese cities that was bombed.

"We believe that war-minded and selfish nations must correct their behavior if they want to have a place in the future world."

Iran has previously given mixed signals over whether it will accept the incentive offer, made by the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany to Tehran on June 6.

Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Thursday the international community's "carrot-and-stick" policy over Iran's nuclear program was counterproductive.

"Humiliation and the use of language of threat of referring the nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council... have had a serious impact on mutual trust and confidence on parties involved and thus the process of negotiations," he said.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said Thursday his country would not bow to pressure over its atomic program, implicitly rejecting the calls to suspend enrichment.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will not bend to these pressures. The continuation of this scientific progress is its fundamental and basic right," Iranian state television quoted Khamenei as saying.

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