Iran said on Monday it would remove the seal on the uranium conversion facilities in Isfahan after Tehran's deadline for the European Union to submit its proposal on Iran's controversial nuclear program was ignored by the EU.

The spokesman for Iran's supreme national security council and senior nuclear negotiator Ali Aghamohammadi said Sunday that Tehran would resume the conversion if the EU failed to present its proposal before the deadline of 5:00 p.m. local time on Sunday.

Majlis (parliament) Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel told reporters Monday that Iran extended the deadline for 24 hours until 17:00 (1230 GMT) Monday.

Britain, France and Germany who represent the EU in nuclear talks with Iran promised in late May to hand over Tehran a package of comprehensive proposals in two months.

Aghamohammadi said Saturday that Iran turned down a demand made by the ambassadors of the EU trio to postpone the presentation of the proposal until Aug. 7.

In fact, Tehran was pressing the EU to secure Iran's legal right to enrich uranium as part of its nuclear program which the West suspects could be used to build an atom bomb but Tehran insists is for entirely peaceful purposes.

Iran's outgoing President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami has threatened that Tehran is determined to resume some sensitive nuclear activities no matter what proposal the EU will present.

Aghamohammadi said Monday that Iran has sent a letter to the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA to inform it of the resumption of the conversion activities in the central city Isfahan.

He announced that the seals on the Isfahan facility would be removed later Monday under "full supervision of the IAEA experts and all of the uranium conversion products in Isfahan would also be kept under the agency's inspection".

He stressed that resuming conversion activities "had nothing to do with the uranium enrichment", therefore was not at all in violation of the Paris Agreement between Iran and the EU in October 2004 under which Iran suspended all enrichment-related activities one month later to pave the way for negotiations.

"We will continue suspension of uranium enrichment and hope the door for dialogue will continue to remain open," he said.

The three EU powers has been persuading Iran to give up uranium enrichment in return for political and economic incentives.

They have threatened to back the US demand to refer Iran's nuclear case to the UN Security Council if the Islamic Republic resumed enrichment-related activities during negotiations.

Uranium conversion, a preparatory step for the enrichment, means the process that uranium ore nicknamed "yellowcake" is turned into uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). UF6 can be processed in thousands of connected centrifuges to yield enriched uranium, which can be used to generate electricity as well as build nuclear weapons.

Source: Xinhua