Iran will resume some key nuclear work regardless of what proposals the European Union will make in the next few days, outgoing President Mohammed Khatami said Wednesday.

"No matter what kind of proposal the EU presents in the coming days, we will resume the activities in the Isfahan facilities," Khatami told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

"However, we still hope that they (the Europeans) permit us to resume the program," Khatami said, adding the decision of the resumption was made at a previous meeting.

Khatami further said the mentioned sensitive activities should be resumed when the EU put forward their nuclear proposal in late July or early August.

The outgoing president was referring to the conversion of raw uranium mine, nicknamed "yellowcake", into UF6 gas in preparation for further enrichment in a Uranium Conversion Facility near the central city of Isfahan.

As to the pivotal enrichment, Khatami stressed that Iran has no plan to halt the suspension.

"Anyway, the peripheral conversion is quite different from the enrichment itself. The resumption of the enrichment has not been taken into account so far although we are surely going to do it in the future," Khatami said.

Enriched uranium can be used to generate electricity as well as build nuclear weapons.

Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities in November 2004 to avoid a referral of its nuclear case to the UN Security Council, opening gate to the ongoing nuclear negotiations with the EU.

The European trio of Britain, France and Germany, parleying with Tehran on behalf of the EU, have been trying but in vain to talks Iran out of its enrichment program.

Iran said it will never give up its right to develop peaceful nuclear technology, insisting that the enrichment activities are the legal rights secured by the Non-proliferation Treaty.

The EU promised in late May during the latest bilateral talks in Geneva to make a comprehensive proposal in two months, including a package of economic and political incentives, to solve the Iranian nuclear issue.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani has already warned that a European nuclear proposal unwelcome to Iran would impair the fruits achieved by the two sides.

"I hope the decision they (the Europeans) make would not waste fruits of our mutual efforts. Iran would wait for their comprehensive cooperation proposal. If that proposal would be arranged in a way to face Iran's rejection, we might be faced with new conditions," Rowhani said on Monday in Johannesburg.

On Aug. 4, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a landslide victory in Iran's ninth presidential election in June, will come into power.

Due to Ahmadinejad's explicitly worded hardline stance on the nuclear issue, it has been expected that his assumption of office will make Tehran much tougher in the nuclear negotiations, which has raised wide worries over the prospect of the diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear dispute.

The United States accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons secretly, but Tehran rejects the charge as politically motivated, saying its nuclear research is fully peaceful.

Source: Xinhua