Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Iran would never submit to outside pressure against its nuclear program, state media reported.

"Pressure will have no effect on Iran's process of decision making," Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying.

The president made the remarks on early Monday morning, just hours prior to a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, over Iran's nuclear issue.

Ahmadinejad warned that tough measures taken by western countries would just run counterproductive, according to IRNA.

He reiterated that Iran's nuclear activities were carried out within the framework of related international regulations and that Iran was expecting western powers to respect the will of the Iranian nation.

"We want to see a peaceful and tranquil world and therefore, we want to work on the basis of international regulations," Ahmadinejad said, adding that Iran would "neither use coercion nor accept force imposed on it."

Shortly after Ahmadinejad's comments, the IAEA's board meeting began in Vienna.

Right before the meeting, the IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that he was hopeful a deal over Iran's nuclear program could be reached in the next week or so.

"I am still very much hopeful that in the next week or so an agreement can be reached," he told reporters.

There are contacts going on in a bid to reach an agreement on modality for Iran and the Europeans to go back to the negotiating table, said ElBaradei.

The IAEA adopted a resolution in early February to report Iran's case to the UN Security Council but called on the council to withhold punitive actions until Monday's meeting.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani warned on Sunday that the Islamic Republic would have to resume large-scale uranium enrichment if hauled to the UN Security Council.

Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham on Monday urged the IAEA to "judge Iran's nuclear case on the basis of facts and law and not to be subdued by political demands of certain countries."

The tension over Iran's nuclear issue has hiked since Tehran resumed nuclear fuel research work on Jan. 10 and the crisis escalated as Iran prohibited the IAEA's snap inspections and resumed small-scale enrichment work, a retaliative move against the IAEA's February resolution.

Source: Xinhua